The Rifleman - Bk1 - Ch.16 (Patreon)

Chapter Sixteen

Party Time

The Wyrd Watchmen were dropped into what appeared to be an alleyway. Wesley immediately noted the similarity to Earth, but the others didn’t seem too surprised by their surroundings, so it was clearly something they had seen before.

Looking closer, Wes noted several differences. The walls may have looked like those from Earth, but the bricks were rounded at the corners, and the writing on the poster slapped on the walls was covered in runes instead of any writing style he knew. Still, it was the closest to being in a city like home that he had seen since coming here. Just his luck it would be in a dungeon.

“Urban environment,” Mace called softly, “No sounds of movement.”

The big guy led the way out of the alley, Wesley noting the water fountain in passing and onto what appeared to be a main street. The soft yellow light came from round lanterns that looked like paper hanging from black, curved poles.

The roadway was definitely tarmac, or close enough that it made no difference, and banners were stretched across the street from the tops of the buildings. 

One of the lanterns fizzled and went out as a soft rain began to fall. 

“Here we go,” Mace said quietly as a group appeared at the other end of the street. They weren’t humans; instead, looking like humanoid dogs, their muzzles drooling as they started to snarl and unsheathed weapons. “Five enemies, all armed with short swords,” Mace said with a grin. “A nice warm-up.”

Then he stood aside.

“Get ‘em, Wes.”

The leader of the enemy group barked once, and they charged.

Wesley didn’t have time to think, simply dropping into a firing position and drawing a bead on the lead dog-man. His bullet caught it in the shoulder, sending it tumbling to the side, where it tripped another of their attackers. Wes aimed again, firing twice and killing one of them before he rolled backward and came up to fire again, catching a third target in the leg, sending it tumbling as it howled in pain. 

The first to reach him leaped forward, sword coming down in a wicked slash. The forms he had practiced came to his rescue as his body reacted without him having to even think, parrying the slash and pushing it wide of him.

Wesley fired the gun point blank into the creature, ending its life instantly.

He rolled back again, fixing his bayonet for the first time in a while. 

Two attackers dead, and two injured. One charging.

The next attacker was only a second behind; it swept the sword in a complex pattern before stabbing forward with a howl. Wesley stepped aside, feeling the sword scour down the side of the Gorger Vest he wore, and wrapped his arm around the attacker's hand before twisting sharply. Something in the wrist snapped, and he kicked away before sweeping the thing’s legs and stabbing twice in quick succession. Both hits landed right in the chest, and the dog-man stilled. 

Three dead, two injured. Four bullets remain.

Wesley dove past the limping leader of his attackers and rolled onto his back, firing twice to finish it off as it tried to turn and stab at him. 

Five dead, one injured. Two bullets left. 

He spun and fired at the still downed enemy clutching the leg wound. It was trying to crawl away. The first bullet caught it in the chest; the second shattered the back of the skull.

Wesley pushed himself up to his feet, casting Reload before slamming in the new clip and racking the bolt on his rifle.

No one spoke.

Another five spawned at the end of the road, and this time, Wesley didn’t hesitate or wait for Mace to engage. He was pissed. That had been a pretty shitty thing to do, and while he appreciated they might have their reasons… he was past caring. It was just too much like Gem.

His first bullet sizzled as it tore into an enemy's head. This time, it was a group of six, and he saw the leader was bigger, holding a riot shield. Two more shots felled their targets before the group got together behind the shield, moving forward carefully. Wesley popped into wisp-form, leaping for the balcony of a building next to him before changing back and firing again. Another one of them fell before the shield moved to cover that angle. Wesley rolled over the edge and dropped to the floor. The leader charged, and Wesley went to wisp form again, kicking off and skating across the road before dropping it again. The shield bearer tried to shift, but the other dog-man was utterly exposed. Wesley fired and killed him before turning to face the last enemy, who howled in anger and charged.

Four shots left.

Wesley dodged aside as the dog-man tried to slam him with the shield, stabbing the bayonet into the exposed knee as he spun away. Before he could finish it off, Alber arrived, daggers digging into the sides of the shield bearer’s neck and ending the fight. 

He nodded to Wesley, and they both turned to see a group of seven spawn next. 

Two shield bearers and the ones on either side held crossbows.

Wesley sent two shots into each of the crossbowmen and then Reloaded. He got another one of the standard troops before the rest got to him, and he was forced to change into wisp form to reposition. The fight ended a couple of minutes later, the enemies falling to him and Alber easily enough.

Wesley was starting to pant as a new group of ten arrived. The Shield-bearers were armed with sleek-looking axes in addition to the shields, and four of them were crossbowmen. He and Alber split up, each taking a side of the road and preparing to engage, when a trio of ghostly forms ran past them. Leading the charge was an eight-foot-tall shaved yeti of a man with a greatsword the size of Wesley’s entire body. Ghostly or not, the impact he made was far from ethereal. The enemies went flying like bowling pins as a lizard in a kilt dove into their ranks on the left, and what appeared to be a skeletal rogue went right. 

Not wanting to waste the distraction, Wesley transformed into a wisp and returned to the balcony before dropping wisp form and opening fire on the crossbowmen before they could get a line on Alber, Pris, or the others. 

The following two waves had fifteen in them, and things were starting to get out of hand. His Reload charges ran out as the third wave of fifteen began, and he was in the midst of the fighting now. 

He saw Alber stumble, a short sword held by a snarling dog-man with a Doberman-like face neatly severed his cursed arm just below the elbow. Wesley didn’t hesitate to use his last bullet to kill the attacker and helped the injured rogue clear of the fight before putting on a tourniquet, casting Emergency Heal, and returning to the fight. 

Without any ranged attacks to use, Wesley was clearly the weakest of the fighters, even including the ghosts. If it wasn’t for the forms he had gained from his meeting with the wisps, he would have been useless. Fighting an intelligent, armed, and armored enemy was completely different from fighting animals or undead. They adapted to your moves, learned to counter you, and more. 

Eventually, the last of the enemies fell, and an exhausted Wesley turned to go and see if he could help Alber, only to see the world freeze and fade.

In seconds, the street was replaced with a large silver room with a portal arch at the end and a small pedestal on one side. A box, also silver, rested there.

“A little help here?” Alber waved his stump at Pru, who went over and held out her hands. A deep red glow came from them, and the arm regrew before Wesley’s eyes. 

For a second, it was healthy dark brown before the black curse erupted down it like a tidal wave, leaving it exactly as it had been before. 

“One left, people,” Pru called. “Hold on to your limbs till tomorrow.”

“What the hell was that, Mace?” Pris rounded on the man. “ Get ‘em, Wes?”

“I wanted to know if he would run if things went bad or if he could even fight,” Mace protested. “If you think about it, it makes sense.” He shrugged.

The others stared at him.

“Does it make sense to lie to a bunch of strangers, especially creepy-looking ones?” Pru asked, shaking her head. 

Mace visibly flinched.

Wesley himself declined to comment, merely sitting down to get his breath back and wait for his Reload to recharge. 

“Are you alright?” Pris asked, shooting a dirty look at Mace. 

“Fine, I just need a minute to rest and about a half hour to an hour for my Reload skill to refill.”

“The rest is no problem,” Alber called. “The recharge on the skill? We only get twenty minutes here before we are forced into the portal.”

“Nice, now we go to the next floor with one injury and one not at full power,” Pru groaned. “Any other bright ideas, Mace?”

“Did we get anything good?” Alber asked as the big man walked over and looted the small chest. 

“Nothing we get to keep,” Mace said with a sigh and threw a small orb to Pru, who made it vanish into her pack.

Twenty minutes later, Wesley followed the others through the portal, a fresh clip in his rifle and barely a spare charge in his skill. 

His feet touched down on mulchy ground, and the smells of a forest filled his nose. Massive trees reached far into the sky, their trunks wider than Wes was tall, and not a single branch was visible for almost as far as he could see. Pathways wound between the trees, and a gentle breeze carried the faint smell of something sickly and sweet.

“Smell that?” Mace asked, his large nose twitching as he sniffed. “What is that?”

“Rot,” Pris said hungrily, taking a moment to dab the corner of her mouth with a handkerchief. “Cooking rot.”

“Not a good sign,” Mace said, gripping his maces tighter. “Alber, can you scout from the trees?”

“It will take a while to climb,” Alber said, scouring the trunk of one with his claws. 

“I’ll give it a try if you want?” Wesley offered.

“Two sets of eyes are better than one,” Mace nodded.

Wesley shifted into wisp form and jumped for the nearest tree, kicking off and sailing across to the next. He kicked off again, pushing himself higher into the air as he worked his way higher up the massive trunks. 

After four more jumps, he leaped straight up, his eyes scanning the forest below as he cast Improved Flare and drifted slowly back toward the ground. 

Mostly, he saw trees. The paths seemed to wind back and forth through the trees, seemingly at random. Something caught his eye, like a hut, but it was gone before he could see it clearly. Wes caught another flash of it on another path and then another.

A moving hut.

“Okay, this sounds weird, but…” Wesley said as Alber shimmied down from his own spot on a tree.

“...there is a hut moving around out there,” Al finished for him.

///////////////

Wesley moved forward, his rifle raised and scanning back and forth while Pris crept along behind him. Chasing down the hut was more complicated than it had seemed at first. It moved on hundreds of wooden legs, stone hooves rattling over the ground. Worse, it was occupied by a veritable horde of gibbering creatures that flung spears from the door and windows. Despite their crude appearance, the spears exploded on contact with anything, doing serious damage. Even Mace had been forced to retreat. The little blue bastards had kept firing even as they ran away.

While Wesley covered Pris, the two melee fighters charged after the hut, forcing Pru to run after them to keep them in range of her healing. Wes and Pris went to follow, only to find a wall of foliage sprung up between them and the rest of the group. It took him less than five minutes to hack his way through it with his handaxe and bayonet, but by then, the rest of the group was gone. 

Ever since then, Pris and he had been repeatedly ambushed by the moving hut and its creepy blue denizens. With no sign of the others, they had been fighting a losing battle. Wes was down to seven bullets for the next ten minutes, and Pris was out of summons. She had used a single charge of each in the street battle and three more when they fought off the last few attacks. 

The attack, when it came, was sudden. 

A rain of spears followed a thunder of hooves from the right, each one exploding as they landed. Wesley used his last bullets for return fire. Four of the little buggers fell, but one landed outside the hut itself. The creatures inside exploded out the door, chittering as they scrambled forward on four legs. Wesley fought with everything he had, but he heard a scream as they pulled back and saw a pair of them running off with Pris’s backpack. 

The enraged ghoul went after them, but the hut withdrew, a pair of parting spears thrown as it ran away.

Wesley threw himself at Pris, bearing her to the ground as the spears fell. A sharp pain in his arm made him hiss, and it was over.

Wesley rolled off Pris, screaming as he tried to move his arm. Emergency Heal was fortunately fully charged, so he cast it before scrabbling for his medical bag. His arm was wrecked…again. 

The moment he had a tourniquet in place, he looked over to check on Pris and paled.

She was breathing heavily, clutching at her side, which was missing a sizable chunk from the same explosion that caught his arm.

“Fuck!” Wesley scrambled over to her and hesitated. He couldn’t cast his heal on her, and applying pressure was almost impossible with one arm almost severed.

“What do I do?” He asked. “What do you need.”

“I require food,” She said weakly. “Unfortunately, they got away with my entire supply.”

“What about dried meat?” Wesley pulled off his pack.

“Not possible,” she grinned weakly. “I appreciate the attempt to block the attack. It was kind of you.”

“How rotten does it need to be?” Wes asked with a sigh. He had another of those stupid ideas. One he really didn’t want to do.

“It doesn’t matter,” Pris frowned. “As long as it is dead.”

“Like, off a dead body… or merely severed?” Wes asked with a sinking feeling.

“Severed is fine. Do you see a limb?” Pris looked around. “I didn’t see them leave any.”

“I see a limb,” Wesley said with a sigh as he looked at his almost severed arm. “I just really hope Pru hasn’t used that other charge of her limb spell.”

“Where?” Pris sat up, “I don’t see it, and not to be impolite, but there is something of a rush.” She gestured at her side, which was leaking dark black blood. 

“Okay, one second,” Wesley said anxiously as he fished in his backpack for his axe.

“You have a–” She cut off talking as he took out the axe. “Wait, wait, wait!”

“It won’t work?” Wesley asked hopefully.

“No, it would work, but…” She gestured hopelessly.

“Let me just say Pru better give me this arm back,” Wesley said, bringing the axe down on the weakest point in his badly damaged arm. The pain of tempering was legendary, but it was not self-inflicted. His mind rebelled at what he was doing even as his nerves screamed their protests. Luckily, the axe did the job in only three swings because Wes wasn’t sure he could have done four. He cast Emergency Heal twice more and mutely handed the severed mess to Pris. 

“Would you maybe consider turning around?” Pris asked. 

“Sure,” Wesley said. “In fact, I’ll just close my eyes for a minute…”

His stump of an arm was wrapped in bandages, but he could swear it was still hurting. Pris had healed up okay, but she was still weak and a little quiet. Not that he minded. The sound of her eating his arm was a sound he was trying very hard to forget. The hutlings had run off with her knife and fork along with everything else, so she had eaten in the old-fashioned way, with hands and teeth.

There had been a lot of tearing noises and even some sucking noises. What he suspected would haunt his dreams for a while was the crunching. His own bones being crunched like sticks of celery.

He had his rifle sling over the bad shoulder, using the strap to give himself a fighting chance to still aim and fire the weapon with his right hand. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

“Anything?” Pris called softly. 

“Nothing,” Wesley confirmed. “I think I might have to jump up for a look.”

“Okay,” Pris nodded.

“Can you hunker down here for a minute?” Wesley asked. 

Pris nodded mutely, so Wesley shifted into wisp-form as he jumped.

“Holy shit!” Wesley’s echoey wisp voice came out louder than he intended. He waved his fully formed and wispy left arm down to Pris, who smiled.

Shaking off his shock at having both arms in wisp form, Wes bounced between two trees and climbed higher into the air, finally spotting the hut and the rest of the team not too far from where they were. It was strange that they hadn’t heard the fighting, but he was willing to bet it was part of this forest's maze-like nature. They might have passed within a few feet of their teammates multiple times. 

Wesley launched himself back down to the ground and beckoned Pris to follow. 

The sound of battle came to them as soon as they passed into the right row of trees, and they both hurried toward the sound. Rounding a final tree, they finally saw their party again.

Mace was roaring in rage as his feet were sliding through the dirt of the forest floor. His massive arms were gripping the sides of the hut while it tried to flee. Alber was dancing around him, stabbing at the remaining blue creatures as Pru channeled a continuous stream of red energy into Mace.

“I’m sorry, this might be strange for you,” Pris said with a sorrowful look before she raised her arm, shooting a ghostly image out from her splayed fingers.

Wesley blinked as a ghostly copy of him raised a spectral M1 and opened fire. 

“What the fuck,” Wesley gasped. 

“It’s the only one I have a charge of,” Pris said apologetically. 

“Huh, I look good,” Wesley said as he watched his ghostly self firing a continuous stream of transparent bullets into the side of the hut. “Hot stuff,” He winked, then stopped.

“Wait, I have an idea,” Wesley replied, running forward. He closed to within a few feet and let his rifle hang from its sling as he shifted into wisp form and cast three Improved Flare charges at once. His form rippled as waves of light and heat shone from it. He jumped, gliding onto the hut, which almost immediately caught fire. The creatures inside screamed, and the hut lurched and groaned as if in pain. As the fire spread, Wesley saw the blue bastards forcing their way out through the windows, and he saw a familiar backpack being held by two of them. He closed burning hands around their necks, and they screamed before dropping the pack. Wes dropped wisp form and grabbed it before rolling away and running clear. 

Things ended pretty quickly after that. The hut continued to burn as the team surrounded it. The legs failed within minutes, and Mace was able to back away and catch his breath.

The moment the roof caved in, everything froze and faded to that same silver room.

“What the hell happened to you two?” Mace roared the moment they were clear.