Tread Lightly – Among Monsters And Men

*******************

Johnny Caldwell

Ten hours before he was found

 

My feet shuffle nervously before I shut down the act of fear. My charges have left, hopefully, in such a way, they can still make it to the Laughing Reeds. Wyatt has the lantern as well, and I feel as though he is the least likely to be put down permanently. As for Otto, I’m unsure how he will fare if he is left completely alone, but I figure Otto is competent enough to survive on his own even without Marion. I can only hope Blake is the same, she did grow up in these swamps, after all.

Dark glimmers that have to be the eyes of Darkstep stare at me through the abyssal haze that covers her face. She only wants me. Not them. Despite what she might be showing, I know that if she truly wanted to kill those three, she would have done it herself. But that’s not what’s happening.

Her orders are to kill me and put down my rebellion. She can stretch them in a bit, either delaying for fun or leisure, but in the end, all orders must be followed. We are but dogs to the Pillars. Should we resist, our collars are tightened until we choke. And if someone is like me without a collar? Then they will simply send a bigger, tougher, dog to sort it all out.

Except I’ve been saving one final trick. An ace up my sleeve, if you will. My only regret is that it wasn’t useful against Hura due to his ability to obscure my vision with his dark clouds. I performed the Goldeyes Absolution about a year or so ago. The hellish encounter I had that leaves a scar on my mind even now, gave me a skill that I have used only once, which was the minute I got it. Both because of its power and its effect.

The skill, which I promptly named Golden Eye, gives me a unique vision. It allows me to see all the organs within someone’s body, and the exact places to hit them as well as a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view. But that’s not all. My pupils turn vertical and golden as I temporarily harness the strength of an Angelic Sigil at the very least, allowing me to slightly control time itself with their magnificence. Somehow, somewhere, this Sigil is along my possible path, otherwise, I would never have gotten the Absolution.

There are two big things I have to be careful about, however. I can only affect what I directly see, any amount of cloudy sight will hamper the travel of Ether. This is what prevented me from using it against Hura as he always had a cloud focused on me to stop both my bullets and whatever else I might have. Well, that and the fact it only affects the two of us, me and my target, it’s useless without an unhindered view of my target. The second is that each use blinds an eye for a whole week.

The two negatives, though, do not even come close to the positives. The first and only time I used it, allowed me to rewind time on an Outlaw that was trying to remove my head from my body, effectively giving me a whole extra second to react and take him out.

Our little stare-down lasts only a total of about five seconds after Wyatt and the rest leave as I prepare my Absolution skill and all the others I know. Not just that, but I’ve loaded my six most expensive bullets into Downpour, all of which excel in combating those with darkness attributes in their Ether. My decades of saving money have finally come to fruition. Only I've lost it all after just a few short months... Doesn't matter though. Unspent money is unacquired power.

Close to a dozen skills, Quilted and singles, coalesce over me as I see Darkstep do something similar, a bit of a glossy shimmer covering her. I try to get the first blood as my eyes begin to turn golden in preparation to manipulate the flow of the only thing that cannot be bought with any amount of gold.

I bring Downpour up, firing my first opening shot, a concussive flashbang that covers the whole area with a bright light as I swing my lever action from my back with my left hand. I go to quickly shoot another shot with Downpour, only a fraction of a fraction of a second after the first leaves the barrel, but Darkstep is already close to me.

My golden eyes barely allow me to see her fastest movements as she travels amongst the darkness behind the light. I briefly notice that the organs within her body are a bit weird, but I just take her oversized heart as a simple mutation that might be the reason she is so powerful. I take a quick step back to try and recover any amount of distance, but it’s futile. My second shot that comes out is shot into the air, right before she even gets close to me, and that is a flare that goes into the sky, showering us with another white light. My plan is to remove as much shade as possible to slow her down. It will be hard in a swamp, though.

But that’s okay. I brought a lot of light in case she were to show up.

By the time I go for my third shot that would also coincide with a bullet from my lever action, Palisade, Darkstep arrives, the shadows bolstering her speed despite how few there are.

She swings at me with a smug comment and a dagger formed of solidified shadow.

“Y’know, you can still turn yourself in. I’m ordered to let you live should you surrender. You won’t do that will you, though, Johnny? Too prideful and too arrogant.”

Ignoring her, I lean back to dodge the blade as I twist and fire a bullet right at her with Downpour, another bullet filled with Ether attuned to light leaving the barrel with a bright explosion. But just before the lead sinks into her side, she disappears, using the only shadow remaining to reposition.

The one under me. I quickly dive away, but I’m nicked in the ankle by her emerging from below me. Some sort of poison and antagonistic Ether enters my veins as I try to fight it off with my own.

I twist my whole body to turn and fire more bullets at her, and while the bullets bounce off of her armor bolstered by her Ether, the light they leave behind slows her down greatly, making the fight much fairer. I attempt to stand as she moves back at me with Downpour’s endless cylinder covering me now that I’m out of flares.

Bullets bounce off of her Ether as the gleam around her shimmers and cracks after a few direct impacts. Darkstep isn’t one to be idle, though, as she follows me like a wraith. We trade several more exchanges, most of which ending up with me gaining small wounds and her only being slightly exhausted of Ether each time. Every exchange ends with me retreating.

She is so fast, and seldom makes a mistake with her experience. Even when she does, it’s very rarely one I can take advantage of without trading for injuries. This old woman is just simply too good at killing. That’s all that can be said.

It’s clear to see who’s losing this fight, and it’s me. Even with her darkness weakened, I’m still getting my ass kicked. I have been told quite a lot that my Sigil is simply pisspoor for a 6th Sigil, only making my hands fast, my eyes keen, and my aim supreme. But that’s not all. There are other parts that people simply don’t understand.

My aim is only supreme because I can feel time. Not quite like an Augur who can see into the future, although I feel like that should be my next Sigil. It’s more of an instinctual sense of movement and timing. And I’m glad for this sense as it’s kept me alive far more times than I can count.

Several times I just barely dodge or get a bullet off to push Darkstep back as I weave in between her minute mistakes or openings. Things that I can’t see, but only feel. And I feel them even more so while my eyes are trimmed with this limited gold. I am running out of time to use them, as I can feel the strain building up in my eyes for such a long wind-up.

Either I use them very soon, or I stop the skill entirely. Otherwise, I will simply take the blindness without any positives. Absolutions are odd, mysterious, and fathomless, but they are not weak.

I get pushed back against a tree from a spinning kick of hers that leaves a wound in my gut. I try to fire a few bullets to get her away, but Downpour is simply not powerful enough as she is able to withstand several bullets without flinching. I need a better Colt. She then follows up with a high kick that flies at my neck sideways. I catch the forceful kick with both my arms as I go to push her off, but before I can she flows a monumental amount of Ether into her foot.

I didn’t expect anything more than just a kick from this as the only thing dangerous about her legs are the blades on the bottom of her feet.

I try to just push her arm off, but a shoot of darkness flies straight from her boot into my neck, severing my head from my body. I feel everything move in slow motion despite everything happening so fast. But this is not the first time I have been decapitated. The last time was when I gained my Absolution, and as such, I know what to do.

Just as I did to the man who killed my whole platoon, bar about ten or so survivors like Levi and Primrose, while my head falls through the air into the water, I focus my right eye onto Darkstep’s body. I focus specifically on her heart which I can see with the golden pupils. The sight is clear as she stops moving to watch my head fall, and nothing blocks the sight between us, not even a speck of blood.

A weird feeling emerges from me as I feel my eye become inundated with such a foreign kind of Ether that I’ve never sensed in my whole life except for the last time I did this. Smoke comes from my eye as it seems to partially combust itself to perform this seemingly impossible act of Ether.

The world twists before my eyes and before I know it, I am back to the exact second before she hit me with the spinning kick. There is only one difference. No light comes into my right eye. That is the price I pay for the ability to slip through time. Not small, but certainly worth it.

Now that I know her next move, I prepare for it. I see Darkstep go for her previous feint of a dagger throw before then going for the kick to the gut with a blade on her heel. I retaliate with a shot that would have missed in every single situation except for the one where she feints into a mid-kick. And this is a shot I can only perform because of the extra time I’m given to do so.

I see surprise fill her body as I push Ether into the bullet as much as I can, I’m not much of an enhancer or transmuter when it comes to Ether, but I can manage. The bullet flies out several times faster than usual and strikes her square in the darkness that covers her face as she is in the middle of her kick. No Ether is there to defend her this time. I see bits of skull fly out and blood splatter.

She stumbles backward for a moment as I finally land a clean hit and I rapidly follow up with more bullets from Downpour, pushing as much Ether as I can before a bullet leaves the barrel with a fiery explosion. I hit her several more times as blood finally flows from her.

All it seems to have taken for me to beat her was to both cheat death and time itself, although only by a single second.

My confidence rises further as I put more and more bullets into her, but she still won’t go down even after two dozen are rapidly fired into her body with Fanfire, an evolved form of Fasthands that uses my Sigil’s touch. I don’t let up the pressure, though, even as she takes several steps back from the impact.

I only stop after shooting her with close to a hundred bullets, each of which coming out right after the other, overheating Downpour, and forcing me to stop firing the gun. Blood falls out of her in heaps as the cloud of darkness over her face finally fades. Excitement rises at finally knowing what the old crow looks like alongside the hope of winning this bout.

Behind the mask which no one has seen behind, as far as I know, is a surprise. Behind the mask is not a human. It is one of the other humanoid races that vie for land against us. A Nahullo. A race of white-skinned and white-haired giants, most of which are between eight and ten feet tall. I believe Abraham is at least part Nahullo with his hair and skin.

But what’s truly surprising is that Darkstep is not a giant like most Nahullo, she seems to be some kind of disfigured one. Her features are unlike the normal and blocky features of the giants, they are slurred, almost as if melted with acid. Maybe she is only half? Either way, it starts to explain why she always hides her face. I can imagine many people who would kill her just because of her paper-white body and hair.

I wait for another second to see if she will fall over dead after all those wounds, but she doesn’t. The old lady, which I now realize isn’t truly all that old because of how long those giants live. If she is even a fourth Nahullo, she will likely live two centuries. The full ones live almost four, taking half a century to even reach adulthood.

Her arms fall limp in front of her as her back bends oddly. It seems almost as if something is happening to her. Something… dark.

I start to back up and look for a way out, but what is in front of me stuns me with its malfeasance. A large phantasmal figure made of dark wood like a marionette holds strings that latch onto Darksteps body, casting a dark shadow over her so powerful that it removes all light, even that which comes from the sun. A zone of gloom surrounds me wholly. A dark murmur touches my ears without her lips moving at all only the figure's above her lips moves as Darkstep starts to move like a puppet.

“You are not the only special one. At our level, these things aren’t so rare, are they?”

I grit my teeth and make a split-second decision as I realize what she means. She also has an Absolution, which is something that I wasn’t expecting because of how long she has been a 6th Sigil. If she were to have one and be a normal human at that age, she’d feel rushed to advance, and would either already be an Angel, likely a 7th Sigiled Power by now, possibly even a Virtue. She’s old enough that making it the 7th Sigil isn’t impossible, let alone the eighth. But it makes sense why she hasn’t. She doesn't need the extra lifespan and can take her time.

She is infiltrating the Hunters like a perfect spy. A halfbreed or maybe even a mutated full Nahullo. It doesn't matter. It just shows the rotten even more clearly. A foreigner has entered the inner circle of the Hunters, becoming a figure just below a Pillar. What madness. At least I know why she is such a perfect dog. She doesn’t want to be investigated at all. For if she is ever forced to take that mask off, all will know.

My decision, however, is one that I know will cost me. But it will cost me far less than this mistake. I forced her to use this skill because of the damage I did with that very first bullet. This skill likely has a very severe side effect, but the fact that it helps her survive after taking a lethal wound to the head is reason enough to be afraid.

I don’t want to fight someone like her with such a dangerous ability as I could barely keep up without it.

I chose to simply go back, using my left eye this time for Golden Eye just before I run out of time to do so. There are only two problems.

I can’t see her clearly in the dark, and I can’t go back in time that far. At least I haven’t before. It’s only been about two, maybe three seconds since I shot her in the head. So, I need to hurry if I want to succeed.

And a third... what do I do when I go back in time? But that is something that I can let brew. I need to go back first.

With a goal in mind, I push down with my feet and sprint toward the phantasmal puppeteering wraith above her, trying to get close enough to see her perfectly. This is incredibly risky, but I press on regardless. If she is able to kill me before I can see her clearly, then that is that.

Through the darkness, I can roughly see her stand up unnaturally straight, but before I can do anything to react, the Nahullo woman is right in front of me, with an arm speared through my chest.

Blood sputters from my mouth as it falls onto her pale face. The lightlessness of the puppet sends a chill through my spine as the woman grabs it with her hand. But I am not yet dead, I just have a foot in the grave. But I’ve learned a lot from my resident Graves. Even in the face of imminent death, you don’t relent.

With the last of my strength in my rapidly fading body, I use an old skill I haven’t used in a long, long time. Ignite. This creates a small spark, one that is carefully placed within the always full cylinder of Downpour before it falls from my paralyzed hand.

A gunshot goes off, sending a brief flash through the darkness, allowing me to get one glimpse at Darkstep. One in which I focus directly on her unnaturally large heart, using every ounce of my mind, soul, and heart to rewind time with my left Golden Eye.

I feel time twist and warp underneath my perceptions as my mind itself creaks under the pressure of pushing the skill, but I do not give up. Because if I do, I will not go back far enough to fix my fuck up.

Fathomless force grates across my mind in a space of timelessness as I attempt to place my will onto it. I am only able to briefly touch a stream of gold before being shunted away with a splitting headache that makes me fall to my knees instantly. But as my open ears take in the surroundings, I realize I am back to just before I shot her.

My fall made me dodge her attack, a whoosh going over my back as I kneel in the pitch black. Both of my eyes are now gone for a month. But the pocket aces should give me the final hand.

One that The Cabin hinted at long ago when I gained this Absolution.

Unalloyed, not because you do not fail. But because you can try again. And again. Until you find the right target.

Shakily, I stand up with a confident voice as I find the right target, the only one that might let me keep my life even in the dark. Not all things have to be shot. Sometimes, words are the best way to get out of a deadly encounter. My days as a Lawman taught me that.

“So, what’s it like being a Nahullo?”