The Wanderers: First Law

by firefeng

Rating: teen
Tags: Alternate Universe, Human, Princess Luna, Applejack, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Adventure, Profanity, Violence
Length: 12169

Earth is home to many gods. Lately, there seem to be quite a few more. Law doesn't care. He's got his hands full with just the blue alicorn. And the Trickster god. And the vampires. And everything else that just simply isn't real.

His Ma always told him he was different. "Gentle," she'd add, her eyes focusing on something distant. Then, with a warm smile, she'd tap him on the nose. He would grin, leaking milk down his chin before shoveling the next pile of Cheerios into his mouth. Then, she stopped telling him that. Stopped saying much of anything, on account of not being around anymore. He got along anyway, alone. Just him, his wood carvings, and his meds.

His name was Lawson Detierre. Sounds fancy, but most people in town just called him Law. Most of the odd creatures, gods, and demons that seemed drawn to him called him that, too.

The blue alicorn and the orange pony with the hat mostly just called him 'friend', though.

Published 2015-10-02 16:00:02 UTC
Last updated 2015-10-02 16:00:02 UTC

Prologue: Starfall

Prologue: Starfall

Prologue
Starfall

Princess Celestia’s breath started to rasp as she pushed herself harder, galloping for all she was worth between the jutting crystal fingers that flowered from the walls of the cavern. Hollow echoes of distant hooves reverberated between the solemn, translucent structures, the only reminder left of her Guard after she had powered ahead. She rounded a bend, stumbling briefly over the uneven pathway. She burst into a large room, the crystalline pillars around her extending several hundred meters towards the ceiling and bathing the room with a quiet, pulsing luminescence. Seeing the opening to the next leg of her path on the far side of the gargantuan room, she lowered her head and her horn lit up. Tendrils of magic and multi-colored sparks twirled around the crystal pillars as she blinked out of existence and appeared before the exit, still in a full gallop.

She fought off the wave of dizziness that washed over her, refusing to slow her run. Accursed crystals and their interference! She would be there by now, were it not for the unique features of the caverns below Canterlot. She had to be! How could it have come to this? What were they thinking?!

She rounded the final bend of her journey and the small, crystal-laden crevasse she was in widened. Gargantuan, gilded doors inscribed with arcane scripts loomed ahead, blocking her path, but she merely pressed herself harder. A few beads of sweat trickled down the sides of her face as her horn’s glow reflected off the walls and its gems, a subterranean starscape that seemed to dance about in its mockery of her inadequacy. The lines in the door began glowing a molten gold, and with a thunderous crack they began to move inward. The light from within almost blinded her, and the rush of heated air sent her normally languid mane into jittering undulations as she pressed forward. She sprinted for the massive doors, her large form little more than a bright mote of dust floating towards the sun-pierced crack between wooden blinds compared to the towering gates.

Her harried rush ground to an abrupt halt the second she entered the chamber beyond. She ignored the walls made of pure crystal, ignored the brightly glowing runes coursing their length from the floor to the ceiling, several hundred meters overhead. She ignored the mirror polished floors, refracting and reflecting beams of kaleidoscopic light. She merely stepped through them, her jaw slack and her eyes wide.

In the center of the room six mares hovered a good distance off the ground, their eyes glowing white as they channeled their powerful magic through the Elements of Harmony. Wind whipped with aether-tinged luminescence in a large sphere around them. Lightning stabbed violently—and with increasing frequency—from the orb’s surface before arcing inward, back into the thaumaturgy that fed it. The runes on the wall seemed to glow more brightly with each passing second, and hairline cracks began to form in the perfectly even floor beneath them. In the very center of this maelstrom stood Luna, her horn sparking and glowing many times brighter than Celestia’s own sun.

“Sister, no!” Celestia cried.

The light in Luna’s horn dimmed slightly for an instant, and her glowing white eyes softened as they fell upon her older sister.

“I’m so, so sorry, Tia,” she said, her voice breaking, before her horn sparked with greater intensity. “But we will not abandon-”

The light in the room flared violently, drowning out every detail in a searing flash as Celestia threw her hoof in front of her eyes to shield them. For one second, two seconds, all sound cut out and silence reigned oppressively, cowing the solar goddess. She barely felt the shockwave as it hit, slamming her into the crystalline wall behind her. The roaring boom was later recorded as being heard as far away as Appleoosa. It barely registered on her consciousness. She was only vaguely aware of the floor and walls around her shattering beneath the thaumaturgic shockwave as the light winked out, only vaguely aware of being crumpled on the ground against the wall. As the world collapsed around her, only one thing scorched her memories in one final, excruciating brand.

The look of sorrow in her little sister’s eyes was genuine.

When she finally stood on shaky hooves several moments later, she faced the ruined room, alone. The others were long gone.

* * * * *

Her. Mane. Was. Ruined! The rain never seemed to end in this wretched place, even if she had just been here for a few minutes. And the first individuals she tried speaking to were absolute brutes! Her polite introductions were met with little more than bleating and empty stares from the large group of sheep around her.

She pouted as her eyes wandered, scanning across the emerald hills as the weeping, dull grey sky continued devastating her mane.

"You have got to be the ugliest sheep I have ever seen," a child's voice stated from behind her.

The mare's eyes widened and with a huff, she whipped around.

* * * * *

She didn’t scream! It was more of a battlecry. Yeah, that! A battlecry as she felt a lurch and began losing altitude. Her wings hammered at the air but she still kept dropping like a stone, at least until she slammed into the large tarp cloth in front of her. No, wait, until she attacked the large cloth in front of her! With a battlecry!

She quickly became entangled with more than a few ropes as she slid down the rough material, before crashing into a hard, wooden surface. She groaned, trying to pull herself to her feet as the wood beneath her seemed to roll gently, rhythmically.

* * * * *

Well, ain’t no way around it. The mare clenched her jaw and pressed open the cupboards she had ducked into to catch her breath. She stumbled out into the sterile room she had first appeared in. She reckoned not much had changed since then. Still had the same cool, stale air. The same stark white lighting. The coffee machine was burbling a mite less, and the refrigerator was still making that weird humming noise. Huh, awful weird, that. Refrigerators in Equestria sure didn’t make such a racket. The plastic table in the center of the room certainly hadn’t gone anywhere.

Right, she was stalling. She could do this. She cantered towards the door with the thin window on the upper righthoof side, but paused when she heard a pair of approaching voices.

“-and like I keep telling you, Doc, the reaction times on the EXOs are still too slow. I don’t care how strong they are, if they don’t have speed they’re still gonna get ripped open like a tin can.”

The mare bolted back towards the supply cabinets.

“It doesn’t matter, Xander,” a second voice said, opening the door. “The neurological implants you have are-”

The mare let out an awkward cough, one hoof on the open cabinet as she stared wide-eyed at the two bipeds at the door, who stared right back at her. One was in a grey lab coat, the other was in some sort of uniform.

“Uh, howdy?”

The one in the uniform shouldered past the doctor, pulling something metallic from a sheath on his hip with one hand while he pressed on the side of a band that wrapped around his throat. The mare’s pupils narrowed as she stared into the black hole at the end of the tool the human had drawn. She’d seen what one of those things could do.

“Operative Chessmaster to Command, we have a code zero in the L4 lounge. Repeat, code zero in L4 lounge. Requesting immediate lockdown and a response team.”

“Now look just a minute, here!” she blurted out.

The human put both hands on his weapon’s grip, still leveling it at her. His eyes narrowed. “Shut up and don’t move until the response team gets here, understand?”

She gulped and nodded.

* * * * *

Firecrackers. She hated firecrackers. Okay, maybe she just mostly disliked them even if she could respect that others found them enjoyable. Even still, she wished she had her earplugs. And earmuffs. And that she was in her cottage with the shutters closed and all her friends around and a pillow over her head so-

Kra-BOOOM!

She screeched as the buildings on either side of the alleyway shuddered. She was pelted with a small storm of concrete and dust as she shook her head, willing the ringing in her ears to subside. She looked up fearfully when she heard a small group shouting nearby. She was confused by a section of building above her that seemed to have gone missing, but as the cracking and booming and shouting seemed to grow louder and louder, her ears seemed to melt closer and closer to her head. She slouched deeper into the dark recesses of the alley and hid, as best she could, behind a small pile of concrete and twisted iron.

She began to tear up, the wet trails upsetting the smudges on her cheeks.

“T-Twilight? Princess?” she whispered.

* * * * *

Her head whipped around quickly. She was a lot of feet in the air. Or meters. Or whatever. There were lots of weird houses, boxy houses that all looked the same and booooring and lots of nice patches of grass even though Princess Luna said that they didn’t control the plants here like they did there and then there was the wood fence surrounding more grass which surrounded concrete which surrounded a lot of water which-

She inhaled sharply and her eyes exploded open, almost escaping their sockets. Her downward descent halted immediately. ‘A pool!’

“Cannonball!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, her inertia returning as she curled into a ball and slammed into the surface of the water. She imagined huge tidal waves exploding from her point of entry. As she surfaced, she frowned as the small pony saw that barely any of the pool water had escaped the pool...maybe if she jumped from on top of that huge mansion next to her?

“Um, moooooom?” a voice called out from behind her.

She flashed around in the water, focusing on the voice and cracking a wide grin.

“Hi!”

* * * * *

She swallowed, and almost gagged as her prickly throat stuck to itself. She sighed and flopped to her haunches, staring up into the stark blue sky as the heat battered down on her. She had most certainly not thought this through with enough thoroughness. Her eyes fell to the small depression in the sand next to her. She closed her eyes and summoned her magic, trying to focus it through her horn. It sputtered weakly a few times before dying out, her magic failing again.

She sighed, and began shoveling more dirt out of the depression by hoof. When it was deep enough, she tossed what little remnants of vegetation she could forage into the bottom around a small wooden bowl. Grasping her saddlebag flap with her teeth, she flung it open and hoofed around inside before producing a small tarp. She placed it over the small pit, weighing it down with rocks on all corners. After a few failed tries, she was able to toss a small rock into the center to create a slight depression, right over where the wooden bowl should be inside.

Hopefully, this would be enough. She didn’t recognize any of the cacti around her from her books, and even if she did feel confident enough that they were safe, she wasn’t going to brave their needles without her magic unless things…

No.

Things wouldn’t get that bad. She had promised Luna, and her friends. Her head swiveled and she leveled a determined glare towards the city on the horizon, little more than occasional glints of sunlight and large buildings that upset the dusty sands and squat, lean vegetation in the harsh landscape around her.

She curled up into the shade and tried not to dry swallow; the small pebble she held in her mouth wasn’t triggering her salival reflex as much as it should. The needles in her throat felt almost as harsh as those on the surrounding cacti after several days.

* * * * *

Darkness. Complete darkness, with a smattering of pinpricks piercing the night sky above her. She felt a momentary revulsion at the stars’ ailing light in this place, at their utter lack of majesty and wonder. She tried to control her gag reflex when she realized there was no moon, here, either. He had said there was a moon. She believed him. But the soulless stars above her merely winked humorlessly in their own banal patterns, devoid of life. And of a moon.

She frowned and sighed to herself as she fell through the air at terminal velocity, the cold wind biting and whistling around her ears. She had no idea how close or far the ground was below her falling form. She spread her wings.

Was she really doing the right thing? It was hardly honorable to go behind her sister’s back the way she did, but she owed a debt! By Tartarus, all Equestria owed a debt! A debt that must be paid! She could not just-

Her wings flapped and caught nothing. She frowned, the wind shrieking around her as she rolled her head back to them, willing them to work. She flapped again. Nothing. Again and again and again, faster and faster, yet her wings refused to catch to air. Her breathing began to pick up in intensity. He hadn’t mentioned this. Maybe he hadn’t known?

Her head rolled wildly in a panicked search before discovering where the stars seemed to end and a black void began. The end of the night sky, and the start of the earth below. The speed with which that abyssal event horizon leveled out with her sight horrified her, and for an instant, she felt a stab of fear. If her flight didn’t work, if her horn kept sputtering uselessly like it was now, maybe she might even…

She clamped her eyes shut and flapped her useless wings for all they were worth, flapped until the muscles in her shoulders were burning with exertion not felt in centuries. Right when she expected to slam into the ground, her wings bit into something tangible. She noticed herself slowing and flapped all the more. She opened her eyes, and felt the pegasi magic returning to her. She sailed horizontally through the air, now, no longer descending. A small smile played across her lips, and her horn lit up to test her magic.

Her concentration was broken by a deep rumbling sound, and her eyes widened as she saw two brightly glowing eyes glowering at her from the carapace of an odd creature coming straight for her. She tried to dodge but the large creature slammed into her back half, sending her cartwheeling across the ground before her head hit something hard.

Luna faded into a blackness deeper than the dark world to which she had just teleported.

‘Let the rest of them be in good health. Let them be safe,’ she prayed before unconsciousness consumed her.

Author's Note

Well, in one of his blogs, a much better writer than I am said that prologues should give the reader an idea about the scope of the story. Or thereabouts. I don't think I'm a good enough writer to really do justice to that idea, but I at least tried to give you all some idea about, well, this. Although if you want a TL;DR instead of a prologue, you can have this instead:

Don't expect a short story, or just one, even if this is a side project for me.

Chapter 1: Drove My Chevy To The Levy

Chapter 1: Drove My Chevy To The Levy

Chapter 1
Drove My Chevy To The Levy

It was a quiet day, much like any other, when Law decided to die.

He bit his tongue and dragged his small knife across the wooden figurine in his hands. The elfin form of a young woman rested between his thick fingers as he put the finishing touches on the flowing edges of her dress. She was almost done. With one final scrape, a few flecks of wood floated between his fingers to join the small pile that grew on the pockmarked, worn countertop.

He rested his elbows on the counter, cupping the small carving in his large hands for a few moments. Then, regretfully, he placed the small wooden statuette on the edge of the aging cash register next to him, committing the creation to the same prison as the other carvings he did today. The pretty lady joined the small statuettes of a lithe unicorn and the intricately detailed head of a dragon. When May came back, and told him it was time to close up shop, he could scoop them all up and rush them home to his room in the tiny trailer that his Ma left him. But, for now, he had to stay behind the counter in the dimly lit hardware store.

He glanced around, his slate-colored eyes taking in the sparse shelves of hardware supplies. Nails, bolts, simple tools. May’s Lumber mostly dealt in wood, and in a town like Harmony, their other supplies didn’t see many sales. Most people took the short drive to Laramie and its large department stores for most of their goods, so a lot of the merchandise in the shop had gathered a thick layer of dust. Towards the back of the shop was a keycutting machine, but he wasn’t allowed to operate it. Only May or the old man, Jenson, made keys. Law just had to stay behind the counter, or cut lengths of wood, or load wood onto the pickups when customers made orders. His eyes flicked to the dirty windows of the shop front, the setting sun shooting an orange glare through clouds of calcification, grime, and dust. May would come soon, her weathered features sagging and her tired voice addressing him as “Lawson”, as always. She’d send him home, then. But, not yet.

Law blinked and turned around to the door behind him, opening it and stepping into the lumber yard behind the shop. His face was neutral as he left the dusty shop and felt the warm air of the early summer evening on his face. He used to smile at evenings like this. He trudged a short distance away, where they kept a small bin with extraneous bits of discarded lumber. Perfect for his carvings. Rifling through the pile for a second with a slight frown, he picked a small chunk up and examined it, twisting it in the day’s dying light. The grains all running in one direction, no knots. Hardwood, but he’d been carving long enough for that to make little difference.

With a small nod, unsettling a few strands of his straw-colored hair, he lumbered back into the shop and closed the door behind him, setting the cube of wood on the counter. He stared at it for a few moments, thinking about what he should carve next. This was the hardest part, for him. His large hands wielded his small carving knife with deceptive dexterity, but deciding what to carve in the first place always gave him trouble. So, putting his carving knife into the sheath that hung off his blue jeans, he took one last glimpse at the block of wood before closing his eyes to concentrate, to make an image out of the square he had chosen. He’d done gryphons, dragons, humans, all manner of figurines. Carving tiny statuettes was pretty much the only thing that gave him any peace, but his difficulties with new ideas had only started cropping up again the last month or so.

He had been sneaking his medicine into the trashcan at home. He didn’t know why he bothered sneaking it, since he lived alone, but he always took the daily dosage from the plastic, amber bottles prescribed to him, and surreptitiously slipped the pills into the trash when no one was looking. Which no one ever was, since it was his home and he lived alone. He did it anyway, just to be sure.

The doctors said his medication would help, but they hadn’t told him that it would mean he couldn’t whittle his figures. When he took the pills, he could never think of what to carve next. He just felt blank. So he didn’t take his pills anymore. Not for a year, now. He could come up with carvings a few times a day, and his hands never fumbled like they did when he took them. So, he came to May’s Lumber Yard every day for his shift, and he made carvings when he didn’t have to load planks of wood onto the local ranchers’ trucks.

He wanted to die.

Law opened his eyes, his thick hands framing the small rectangle of wood on the counter in front of him. A puff of air escaped between his lips, and a set of calloused fingers ran through his dark blonde hair. This next carving would be difficult. Flowing robes like the dress on the girl he had just carved. But the scythe on its back would be hard. Maybe with a chunk of pine, or balsa, he could do it. Law wasn’t sure he could get the blade of the scythe right with the hardwood. He decided to try, anyway.

Drawing his small knife from its corduroy sheath and flicking out its blade, his hand hovered over the chunk of wood. He held his breath and inched the knife closer, but a dull clang rang out as the front door of the shop slammed into the dented, rust-stained bell that hung over the entrance. Law dropped the block of wood and looked with mild surprise towards the door before casting a furtive glance towards the Bud Light clock on the wall behind him. Its plexiglass covering was almost opaque with age, but the barest hint of the clock’s hands could be seen beneath the murky plastic. It was about time for May to arrive. Law instinctively reached for his carvings, forgetting immediately about the unscathed block of wood on the counter in front of him.

Law paused his hand when he heard a polite cough, and looked back towards the door. An older man with a neatly trimmed beard, round spectacles, and a sand-colored coat that extended to his ankles stood with his hands clasped behind his back, smiling politely. A few locks of greying hair had escaped from the beneath the rim of his light brown, wide-brimmed hat. His dark eyes held a sheen that glittered like starlight, and when he caught Law’s attention, both his eyes and his smile seemed to brighten a few shades. He walked confidently up to the counter and rested his hands on the edge. Minute wrinkles twisted about the tanned skin on the back of the man’s spindly fingers. Law opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly found it difficult to form words. He had never seen this man in town.

The older man responded for him by slapping the counter and letting out a hearty chuckle. “You, boy! You look like you’ve got some spirit in you!” he said brightly, before covering his mouth and hacking out a series of wet coughs. “Oh, excuse me. One of these days I might quit,” he said with a wink.

“I...okay,” Law replied numbly.

“Smoking, my boy,” the old man, hammering his fist against his sternum as his fit of coughs cleared up. He smiled again. “Terrible habit. Never start.”

“Uh, okay.” Law’s eyes flitted towards the door. May should be here by now. “I mean, sir. Can I...can I help you?”

The odd man’s white brows lifted quizzically for a moment before he dropped his eyes and shook his head. “Oh, dear, where are my manners?” He removed his hat with his left hand and extended his right. “The name’s Helsing. And,” he continued, his tone serious, “I’m here for a few sharp wooden stakes.” He paused for a second. “For the vampires, of course,” he finished, the bright smile returning to his face.

Law’s eyes flicked between the man’s twinkling eyes and his extended hand, his brows furrowing. “Uh, I...vampires?”

“Well, yes,” the old man intoned gravely. “Quite a problem with them in these small towns out west. Terrible, really.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’ll need at least a dozen hardwood stakes to take care of the infestation here in Harmony…”

Law simply stared at him. “My boss. Uh, May. She should be here soon. I think, uh, maybe…” He fell silent for a few seconds, shooting glances towards the front door and hoping May or Old Jenson would come to send him home. Something about the old man threw him off. Made the quiet in town less quiet.

The strange man cocked his head to the side and scratched his temple underneath the frame of his glasses. With a sudden snort, he buried the hand in the front pocket of his large coat and began guffawing wildly. Law backed away from the counter, worriedly eyeing the door behind him as the old man’s laughter intensified. After half a minute, the man’s laughter subsided, and, wiping the tears from his eyes and letting out a final hoot, he looked back at Law with a sympathetic expression.

“Sorry, muh boy. The missus always told me I was never much one for jokes—’fore she passed on, of course—but damned if I don’t try anyway. The name’s Jim. Jim Helsing. And I am here for some stakes. Just need about twenty or so, for a surveying job out at the old quarry.” His cheeks crinkled as he flashed another warm smile. He still held his spindly hand in front of him in greeting. “Simple pine or scrap wood’ll work fine. Don’t need nothing too fancy to tie some twine to, after all.”

Law cautiously extended his hand and gingerly grasped Helsing’s, giving it a meager shake. His thick fingers made the old man’s look like ash saplings next to a forest of redwood trees. The young man quickly withdrew his grasp and averted his gaze.

Helsing frowned slightly. “Well, now, son, that’s no proper way to give a handshake. ‘Specially not from a big, strong lad like yourself!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Law said quietly. “I’ll, uh, I’ll go get those stakes for you.” He stumbled out the back door, heading towards a small corner of the yard where they kept pre-cut lumber. It was mostly yard-posts and the like, but even in a dead town like Harmony, there was enough construction now and then to keep a small bunch of cheap wooden stakes on hand.

After Law had counted out twenty stakes—and recounted, just to be sure—he dropped them all into a wheelbarrow and began plodding back to the shop. He parked the wheelbarrow just outside the back door, and selected a handful of stakes in case Mr. Helsing asked to examine them. He stepped through the back door to the lumber yard, fumbling with the stakes with his left arm even as the door scraped shut. He jostled it a few times until he heard the click of it latching shut, and turned around.

The strange man was staring curiously at the trio of wooden carvings propped against the side of the register, his mouth pursed. Law couldn’t hide his sharp intake of breath when he noticed a pair of fae sprites dancing in the air around his carvings, their manic, high-pitched chattering a testament to their excitement as they hovered over his whittling with unabated glee. The stakes tucked under his arm clattered to the ground as he took a few rushed steps forward, snatching the figurines from the register and holding them protectively to his chest.

Mr. Helsing arched one of his silvery brows as the now angrily chittering fairies disappeared, a few sinking motes of sparkling light being the only evidence they were ever there. He raised his hands placatingly. “Easy, son. Was just lookin’ at your handiwork. That’s some fine carving you got there.”

Law loosened his grip on his carvings, flicking his gaze between them and the befuddled customer across the counter. He sighed inwardly, knowing that the old man across the counter couldn’t possibly have seen the sprites. Law only saw them because he kept hiding his pills away.

The dull clang of the front door’s bell startled him into clutching the figurines tightly to his chest again, but the tired sigh froze him in place.

“Lawson, I think it’s about time for you-”

An older woman in blue jeans and a button up shirt had a set of keys jammed into the door’s lock and halfway turned before she took note of the grinning older man in the sandy trenchcoat, Law protectively cradling his newest creations, and two or three pine stakes on the ground near the rear door. Law immediately recognized the exasperated look in her tired grey eyes.

“Ms. May, I’m sorry, I’ll-”

May shook her head slowly. “Lawson, it’s alright. Just go home.”

Law just stared at her for a moment. He flicked his eyes between his carvings and the odd customer, before clenching his jaws, nodding, and retreating through the back door, nearly tripping over the wooden stakes on his way out. As he trudged through the lumber yard, the sun’s light dying on the horizon in peals of fiery orange, and the wooden statuettes pressed hard enough against his well-muscled chest to leave an impression, Law could only think one thing.

He didn’t belong in this place. This life. He had to leave. One of the legs on the unicorn cracked as he pressed it harder into his chest. Law barely noticed as he fumbled with the door of his battered old Chevy truck before it swung open with a metallic whine. He tossed the wooden carvings on the passenger side of the bench seat, frowning slightly at the unicorn with its leg hanging by a few splintered threads of dried wood. He shook his head to clear his thoughts and jammed the key into the ignition. ‘Doesn’t matter anyway, anymore. Come tomorrow...’ His thought trailed off as the big block engine of his old truck roared to life.

He’d already decided there would be no tomorrow.

A short while later, his truck skidded to a stop in his driveway, kicking up dust and the echoing crunch of caliche rocks after he mashed down on the brakes a bit too harshly. His motions were sluggish as he grasped the key and killed the engine. He placed both hands on the steering wheel and slumped down, staring blankly until his eyes were tugged towards the mobile home his Ma had left him.

His eyes wandered across his bland trailer house—all vinyl siding, dust, and rare spots of rust—before settling on the poorly constructed wooden porch. On top of the aged wooden slats, held together by nails that had long since rusted through, stood a large woman. Equal parts cellulite and faded pink hair rollers—Law was pretty sure she never removed them—and wrapped in a light blue “dress” with unremarkable flower patterns, his trailer park landlady, Ms. Fergusson, stood with her hands on her enormous hips and an annoyed look on her pudgy face.

Great.

With a sigh, he removed the keys from the ignition and stepped out of his truck. The door squealed in protest as he shut it. He should probably oil its hinges. Or he would, but he probably wouldn’t be alive tomorrow. It was an issue for whoever owned it next, he hazarded.

Pocketing his keys, he trudged gracelessly across the driveway to his mobile home’s steps, his eyes glazed over and focusing on the ground. He stopped at the foot of the steps to his home, glancing upwards. Mrs. Fergusson glared down at him. A cigarette, summoned from one of the many folds of the flowery blue tarp she pretended was clothing, jutted out from a pair of lips that had been assaulted with lipstick.

“You’re late on the rent, Lawson,” she said with a huff, the tip of her cigarette lighting up as she pursed her lips.

Law blinked owlishly at her a few times. “Rent’s not due for a couple days yet, Ms. Fergusson.”

“Mrs. Fergusson,” she corrected him, even though Law had never seen hide nor hair of anyone claiming to be wedlocked with the bulbous landlady. “And di’n’t you see the notice I put on the door tha’ other day?”

Law thought back. A couple pieces of paper always found themselves jammed between his door and the crooked door jam a couple times each week, usually advertising the one Chinese restaurant they had in town where no one ever ate. Not that it mattered.

“Ms. Fergusson, you know I, uh...you know I can’t read,” Law muttered.

"Missus Fergusson, Lawson," she insisted. His landlady snorted, letting out a cloud of carcinogenic smoke from her bulbous nose. “And it don’t matter none whether you can or can’t, Lawson. I own this here land yer rentin'. What I says is law. If I decide rent is due on a different day, so long's I got it on paper and inform you and such and such, you gotta pay up. It's just how things work, hon."

Law muttered a few half-assurances, promising to pay the rent, and even the attendant late fee, before she flicked her smoking butt into the driveway and nodded. Twisting her lipstick laden lips, she jabbed one of her sausage fingers into Law’s chest. Her crimson, plastic fingernails, plastered atop and poorly concealing her yellowed natural ones, dug into his sternum.

“Just make sure you do, Lawson. I ain’t runnin’ no charity shelter here,” she said, adding a glare for good measure.

“Right,” Law affirmed numbly, before stepping aside and letting his landlady waddle through the maze of trailers she owned, disappearing amidst the vinyl labyrinth after a few moments as she shuffled back to her shoddily constructed trailer park castle.

With a small shake of his head, he opened the front door of his trailer. A lithe, well-built man in a superbly tailored black suit stood with his back to Law, in front of the stove. As Law closed the door, the man turned away from the stove, wooden spoon in hand, and smiled. His green irises glowed a bit more brightly for an instant. Law frowned at the hot pink apron he wore with the phrase "Kiss The Cook" embroidered in cursive on the front.

"You're home!" the man exclaimed. He paused, tapping his chin with the wooden cooking spoon. None of the red sauce on it made its way onto the man's face.

"Also, I'm going to kill her." He turned back to the pot on the oven. "Your landlord, that is," he added vacantly with a wave of the spoon. "But not before this spaghetti sauce is done!"

Law ignored him. He set his carvings on the wooden table, his mouth quirking slightly as the unicorn’s cracked leg fully separated from the rest of its form. Pulling a chair out from the table with a harsh scrape, Law heaved his considerable bulk into it and sagged down, resting his forehead in his palms. The sounds of his hallucination cooking in the kitchen continued in the background.

“So,” the man in the suit said in a conversational tone, “how was work?”

“You’re not real,” Law replied.

The man let out a small chuckle. “Now, are you trying to convince yourself of that ‘fact’, or the god making you spaghetti in your trailer home kitchen?” He stirred the pot of what he claimed was spaghetti sauce a bit. “I will admit that the latter situation seems a bit odd, to an outside observer, but-”

The man in the suit set the spoon in the pot and turned. His eyes flared a bright green as his pink apron disappeared in a puff of smoke, revealing an untucked, lightly wrinkled white dress shirt underneath the impeccable black suit jacket. He brushed a lock of dark brown hair from his brow.

“-we both know you’re anything but an outside observer, correct?”

Law stared through the self-proclaimed ‘god’ for a few seconds. “You’re not real,” he repeated, his eyes falling to his carvings for a second.

He abruptly stood and went out the front door, the man in the suit raising an eyebrow. Law returned a few seconds later with a piece of wood, sitting and pulling out his carving knife from its sheath. His blade hungrily dug into it, dancing across its surface as it lathed large chunks from the carving material.

The man in the suit snorted. “Really, Law? I slave over a hot stove all day cooking you an Italian classic, and this is my reward?”

“Food’s not real, either. You’re not real, so you can’t cook real food.”

The man’s green eyes lit up again as he let out an indignant huff and pulled a cigarette from his suit’s front pocket. “Is that the sort of nonsense these so-called doctors have been filling your head with, Law?”

“He’s a psych- a psychia-” Law paused, before refocusing on his whittling. “A head doctor. He knows what he’s talking about, more’n me anyway.”

The ‘god’ merely plopped the slightly crooked cigarette into his mouth. His eyes glowed, and the tip of it burst into life. He sucked deeply on the cig for a second before grinning and blowing a cloud of smoke in Law’s direction. Law burst out coughing, before leveling a glare at the man.

“Wish you wouldn’t do that…” he said.

The man took a ponderous drag from his cigarette. “But if I’m not real, neither is the smoke,” he said with a grin, smoke rolling down from the corners of his mouth.

Law’s eyes flicked to the pot on the stove. “What happened to Mexican food?”

The man in the suit wilted a bit. “Never was any good at it. Now, I can cook some mean mutton and brew some amazing honeyed mead, but I have no idea what those mestizos were thinking, putting that much capsaicin into their dishes. Figured the Romans—err, the ‘Italians’, rather—had a better head on their shoulders than the descendants of people who thought their gods craved the blood of sacrifices. Honestly, who actually thinks gods want blood? What are we supposed to do with it? Stain our shirts?”

Law stayed silent, continuing to carve on his chunk of wood. The young man in the suit furrowed his brows slightly, taking a seat across the table from him. “Whatcha carving, anyway?”

Law was silent for a time, fully focused on getting the wrinkles in the robe just-so, before he replied.

“Death.”

“How very macabre.”

More metal on wood scraping. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means there are less morbid ways of spending your time, Law.”

“...No, there aren’t.”

The man took one last drag off his smoke and mashed the butt into the table. Law shot a disapproving glare at the burn mark it left, joining a couple dozen others, but the man in the suit appeared not to notice his dissatisfaction.

“Oh, plenty of things, really. You could drive up to Laramie and buy yourself one of those tablet-thingies your kind seem to love so much.”

Law grunted.

“Oh, don’t be such a grouse. Those things have cat videos, Law. Infinite cat videos!”

Law grunted.

“Huh, fine, not one for the newest tech, then,” the man in the suit said in a defeated voice. “I like cat videos,” he mumbled to himself.

He fell silent, slumping down in his chair, and Law continued to carve. His statuette was beginning to take shape as he hollowed out the eye sockets. There was still a large section on the statue’s back that was untouched. That would be the hardest part, getting the thin blade right.

The man across from him sat up and snapped his fingers. “I got it!” he exclaimed. “You could go out to the old quarry to check out the stars!” Law tensed up. “No lights out there, it’s the best spot for it!”

“No,” he replied, before hacking off large chunks of wood on the back of his carving.

“Oh, come on, Law! You used to go out there all the time with your Mom. You know, to get in touch with nature or whatever the fuck she used to ramble on about.” The man in the suit shot him an impish grin, reaching into his jacket for another smoke.

Law froze. He slowly brought his stony eyes up to meet with the eyes of the ‘god’ across the table. The man in the suit’s green eyes flashed with amusement, Law’s harsh gray stare crashing against the man's glittering irises like a boulder tearing through wet grass.

“You. Do. Not. Mention. Her,” he growled.

The man let out a barking laugh, never breaking eye contact as he lit his smoke and took a deep drag. “What’s wrong, ‘Lawsy’? Even your own mother could tell you’ve turned into a stick in the mud, by this point. If she was still around, anyway.” Law’s breath shuddered at the mention of his old nickname, and he returned his focus to his carving with hunched shoulders. “Come on. Just mosey on out onto one of the cliffs and stare up at the sky, just like old times, yeah? How hard can it be?”

Law made the final cut on the piece of wood, and gently set it standing on the table. The lines in the robe all came out right, and the blade of the scythe was smooth and seemed to possess a supernatural keenness. He stood, breath shuddering and fists clenched.

It was done. He was done. Done. No more. He turned and strode towards the front door.

“Going somewhere?” the man in the suit asked playfully. “Was it something I said?” Law didn’t need to look to know the ‘god’ was grinning at him. Mocking him. Just like everyone else. Just like his mother probably did, wherever she had gone off to.

No more. This ended tonight. Everyone else thought he was slow, and maybe they were right, but at the very least he had the means to end their cruelty. Maybe he would pay a visit to the quarry after all. Maybe then she would see just what sort of son remained behind when she left.

Not much of a son, of a human being, at all.

* * * * *

The ‘man in the suit’, as his unwilling companion liked to refer to him, watched, grinning widely, as Law’s old Chevy truck kicked up a number of rocks as it reversed out of the driveway. His grin started to fade as the truck centered itself on the road in front of the trailer home and sped off with a squeal of rubber. By the time the truck had disappeared from sight, the man in the suit’s features were neutral, his jaw set and his lips a thin line. He glanced towards the horizon; the sun had set a while ago, leaving a canvas of muted, burnt purple that a smattering of stars claimed as their own. He pulled out a silver watch from his breast pocket. It would most definitely be completely dark by the time Law hit the boundaries of the old quarry.

He replaced the pocketwatch, and brought out an old flip phone. He dialed the only contact he had on the ancient thing, letting it ring for a few times before the ringtone cut out and silence reigned.

“Well, hello to you as well, Director Wednesday,” he said to the silence. There was no response. He looked at the pot on the oven, absentmindedly stirring his spaghetti sauce a few times. "It's done."

“Good,” a voice finally responded from the other end of the line.

"I should think so. I've been cooking it for hours. My spaghetti sauce, that is. I'm probably going to go trailer park whale-hunting with Laevateinn, now, but I dunno. May just toss a movie up on Netflix instead."

"...Did you finish your task?"

"Or maybe put on a Food Network show or something. I mean, it's not like our kind have anything better to do these days, right?"

"Did. You finish. Your-"

“For fuck's sake, of course I did! Have you any idea just how hard it is to make a Scion of Life commit suicide?"

There was a slight pause. "I do."

"Of course you do," he spat bitterly. "And my reward for such a task is to be what, exactly, old man?" The man in the suit was met with silence. He grimaced, plucking another cigarette from his jacket. He savored its flavor for a moment before letting out a puff of smoke. "I stopped slipping him mood stabilizers in his food a month ago. I had to balance his antipsychotic meds such that he could see me but still think me imaginary. I not only forced him down the path of self-destruction, but a particularly specific means of death in spite of his own nascent instincts screaming for survival."

"You've done well," the gruff voice said on the other end of the line.

The wooden spoon made a few more circuits around the pot as a pair of green eyes regarded it flatly.

"I've done everything I promised his mother I'd protect him from."

"You know what Cassandra said. This needed to happen. We're not the Greeks. We can't afford to ignore her warning."

"Yes, yes, 'The Great Catastrophe' or whatever," he replied, annoyed. The man in the suit scooped a dollop of the sauce up to his lips, pausing. "You do realize that if the boy actually dies, you're next, right?"

There was an amused chuckle from the other end of the line, but the man in the suit snapped the phone shut, then crushed the phone in his hand. A few sparks accompanied its dying warbles.

He dropped the crumpled phone to the ground as he raised the spoon to his lips. "Wouldn't be the first time I killed you, anyway."

Slurping a bit as he tasted the sauce, and rolling it around in his mouth, he nodded ponderously to himself. He gulped audibly as he swallowed.

"This spaghetti sauce," the man in the suit declared to the empty kitchen, "is fucking atrocious."

* * * * *

The ancient Toyota Camry let out a disconcerting death rattle as Dr. Jim Van Helsing twisted the keys and killed the engine. The old man pinched his brow for a few seconds, before sighing and stepping out of the car. Recovering a couple bags from the trunk and wrestling with the motel’s keycard reader a few moments, he let out a relieved sigh as he set the bags down on the stiff mattress of his motel room. He took in the sparsely furnished, clean-looking room for a second before turning back to his bags.

Riffling through one for a few seconds, he popped back up with a blocky electronic device in one hand, a thick black antennae poking out from its top. He clicked a switch on the side, fiddling with a few dials beneath its LCD screen, before slowly walking around the perimeter of the room. He paused near the flatscreen TV, the clock, the phone, and waved the device around under the bed a few times.

Pressing a few buttons on its touchscreen interface and hearing a satisfying chirp in response, Helsing flicked the power switch and put the device back into his bag, feeling around for another of his tools. He found the first dowsing rod easily enough, but had to dump the bag out to find its partner. He tossed the rest of the stuff carelessly back into his pack, then turned back to the room, dowsing rod in each hand.

He went to the same locations he had searched with his bug detector, his gaze mulling over the rods’ reactions. Then, he went to the mirror in the main room, pausing for no less than thirty seconds before it. When his dowsing rods didn’t react to that particular mirror, he repeated the process for the mirror in the bathroom. Giving a satisfactory nod when the rods didn’t respond, he re-entered the main room and tossed them into his open bag. He sat on the edge of the bed and unlaced his boots, removing them and setting them aside as he massaged the soles of his feet. People didn’t lie when they said that getting old came with a lot of soreness, a lot of random aches and pains. Outside of momentary bouts of spryness, Helsing was no different. Not by much, anyway.

He patted around his tan trench coat’s pockets for his smartphone. Finally finding which pocket he had stashed it in—you could never have too many pockets, in his line of work—he opened the contact list and dialed his handler. He let the phone ring while he sat at the edge of his bed, staring at bland polyester curtains over the main window of his hotel room. Finally, the other line opened.

“Report,” a gravelly voice commanded.

“It's Helsing, checking in. I’ve tracked my targets to Harmony, Wyoming. Population 1,753. How’ve you been, Gil?”

There was a pause at the other end of the line.

“Please confirm location and population.”

Helsing pursed his lips and let out a puff of air.

“Harmony, Wyoming. Population: one thousand, seven hundred, fifty three.”

“That...can’t be right, Doctor.”

“No, no, Gil, I’m pretty damn certain. This is kinda my thing, after all.”

“No, it’s just...my targets are in Tucson, Arizona.”

Helsing’s eyes widened. “Wait, that’s...that’s-”

“Yeah, backwards, I know.”

“Oh, it gets a lot more fun,” Helsing said. “Found an unregistered Druid, to boot.”

“Really, now?”

“Oh, ayuh. He was manning the lumber yard counter where I bought my stakes, actually. Wood sprites were crawling all over those totems of his. Seemed a bit touched in the head, though."

There was the muffled clacking of a keyboard on the other end of the line. “Wait, big guy, dark blonde hair, gray eyes?”

“That’d be him.”

“We’ve got him on file. Ignore him.”

Helsing let out a small groan. “You know how I don’t like unknown variables, Gil.”

“It’s above your paygrade, Operative. He won’t interfere with your operation. He’s got Jester on overwatch.”

“Wait, Jester?!” Helsing’s shoulders slumped. “The director’s-? Aww, Hell, Gil, this just became more of a nightmare.”

“It’ll be fine. Jester won’t even know you’re there.”

“He always knows…”

“Alright, so he probably does. Just consider him backup, then.”

“Yeah, ‘backup’. Great. So,” Helsing said, “suggestions?”

The other line was quiet for a time. Finally, Gil said, “You know what your targets occupying a small town means.” Helsing frowned. He’d spoken once to the lone ‘survivor’ of Roanoke they had on staff. “Mission parameters haven’t changed. Seek and destroy. Act before they do.”

“Obviously,” Helsing said derisively. “What about you? Makes no sense for your targets to hit a metropolitan area. Call for backup?”

There were a few chuckles from the other end of the line. “While your concern is...endearing, Dr. Helsing, I’m fairly certain I can handle a few mongrels.”

“Sure,” Helsing said uncertainly. “Just, if you do need any-”

There was a harried series of knocks on his door. Helsing scowled in its general direction even as he muttered, “Got company, will update you later.”

“Copy. Swordsman out.”

The line cut out. Dr. Helsing stood and removed his spectacles, placing them in his front breast pocket. He hastily zipped up his bags and gave the room another glance before opening the door. A young latina woman in a uniform stood outside his door, clutching a pillow tightly to her chest.

“Wha? Wuzzah?” Helsing said in a befuddled tone. He winced his eyes, rolling them wildly all around the background before settling on what was clearly a motel cleaning lady. He leaned in, scrunching his face up further. “Whatcha after, little señorita?”

“So sorry, so sorry!” the maid cried, clutching the pillow to her chest even tighter. “Forget pillow. No tell jefe, no tell jefe, por favor! So sorry!”

“Oh,” Helsing said. “Is that all? Ain’t a big deal, lil’ señorita. Come on in,” he added, waving her in and turning his back on her.

“Oh, yes, many thank you, señor! Many, many thank you!” the woman said, taking a step through the door.

“Yeah, yeah, lil señorita, it’s fine,” he said with a wave of his hand, before fumbling about with the myriad pockets in his jacket. “Now just where the Hell did I put my glasses,” he mumbled, fiddling inside his jacket and stepping deeper into the room.

The latina maid smiled, still clutching the pillow to her chest with one hand, and entered the room, closing the door with a soft ‘click’. There was a pair of muffled ‘clacks’ immediately after, and she froze as a pair of starburst holes erupted from the back of Helsing’s trenchcoat and a small cloud of feathers shot up from the pillow she carried. Helsing whipped around with inhuman speed, silenced pistol in hand, and emptied the gun’s magazine into the young maid’s extremities with a series of well-placed shots before she hit the ground. His hands a blur, he ejected the spent magazine, grabbing a spare from inside his jacket and slamming it home. He emptied the second magazine into the prone form of the young lady on the ground.

Ejecting that magazine, Helsing again reloaded. The wounds on the maid were already beginning to smoke and close up. The silver beads in his hollowpoint slugs didn’t last for very long before becoming tainted. He backed away from her body, one hand keeping his silenced Springfield XD trained on her while the other fiddled with his second bag on the bed. Digging up a length of garlic cloves strung together in a necklace, the old man cautiously moved forward towards her body. She lay face up on the ground, blank eyes staring up at the ceiling. He maneuvered the necklace of garlic towards her temple.

Her head snapped up and she buried her teeth into his hand, her lips splitting into a victorious grin. Helsing cocked an eyebrow, levelled his handgun at her, and waited. After a few moments the maid’s eyes widened and she jerked her head away from his arm, sputtering and hissing. Helsing put a couple bullets into her face for good measure, the dull thwack of the slugs impacting flesh louder than the action on his silenced pistol. He wrapped the necklace of garlic cloves around her neck. There was almost no more smoke rising from her bullet wounds, but with the garlic it wouldn’t matter much. Helsing crouched down in front of the maid, his gun resting lazily on one knee and his other hand—the one she had bit—jabbing her in the shoulder.

“Come on, lil’ señorita, we both know that wasn’t enough to put you down.”

Her eyes popped open. They appeared feline in nature, slitted, and she glared at him before turning away and letting out a few wet, hacking coughs.

Helsing chuckled, holding up his injured hand in front of her face. “Not to your liking, señorita?” A trail of viscous black blood seeped from a pair of puncture marks. As the maid watched, the trails seemed to reverse themselves, the black ichor shuddering before returning into the wounds as they closed. “Good thing you didn’t swallow, lil’ miss. Way I hear it, my blood’s quite poisonous to your kind.”

“Filthy hunter!” the latina woman spat, her body writhing on the ground as the last of her wounds healed up. “Forsaken beast!”

Helsing ignored her and turned towards his bags, tossing his pistol on the bed. He searched around in them for a moment before turning around and walking back towards the maid, carrying two very different wooden stakes. He crouched down in front of her.

“Now, señorita, I think we both know just how this sorta thing plays out.” He drummed one of the stakes on his shin absentmindedly. “The question, at this point, is really how long it’s going to take me. Now, option A is the easy one.” The maid hissed at him, twitching on the ground but unable to fully move her limbs. Helsing raised one of the stakes. “This here is Betsy. Damned fine stake. Had her with me for years. Mahogany. Fire-hardened. Even has a special glaze treatment in case I miss the first time; makes her a breeze to clean off. She’s probably even sharper than your fangs.” He paused. “Really love her. Parting gift from the old missus, probably older than she was, but Betsy gets the job done, and done quick. Now, you tell me what I want to know, and you and Betsy get to become real close friends for a few moments.”

“Traitor! I tell you nothing!” the maid spat, spasming on the ground again. One of the cloves of garlic blackened, turned to ash, and sprinkled to the floor. Helsing arched an eyebrow. That was not a good sign. There were still a good dozen cloves on the necklace, though.

He held up the second stake, one of the ones he bought from the lumber yard earlier. “This,” he said, bopping the latina on the nose with its tip, “is a pine stake most commonly used in construction. Soft wood. Not really sharpened yet—an old man only has so much time to fuss about details like that. That wedged tip is enough to break the skin, though. And your ribs. Hell, I might even have to break out the hammer for the first time, since, well…” He motioned to the unblemished flesh on the hand she had bitten. “And it’ll probably just splinter before it reaches your heart. S’okay, though, I’ve got twenty of these buggers lying in the duffle over there. Plenty o’ time for a few Mulligans.”

The maid stared up at him, her eyes burning with hatred. “I scream,” she said in a shaky voice. “I scream loud.”

Helsing set the two stakes aside, reached into one of his coat's pockets, and pulled out a wood carving of a monkey with its hands over its ears. The prone maid’s eyes widened. “This one is one of the last ones I have,” he said. “Enjoy.” With blinding speed he slammed the carving onto her forehead, muttering, “Five yards,” before releasing the figure. A pulse of light bloomed from it and spread across her skin. The statuette seemed to wilt and fold into itself, disappearing.

The maid let out an ear-piercing screech. Helsing regarded her lazily, snapping up the two stakes in each hand again. No one outside of a five yard radius could hear her.

“Not gonna do you any good. Last chance, señorita.” He twirled Betsy between his fingers slowly.

“He kill you!” the maid spat, snarling and twitching on the ground again. Another clove of garlic burnt off and disappeared, and the woman’s writhing increased in intensity. “He kill you! Strip your flesh. Drain demon blood and feast on your heart! The Night Goddess comes, through Her power Vayde end you and your weak godlings!”

“Vayde, eh?” Helsing said. She froze, eyes wide. Helsing gave her a warm smile. “Thank you for your cooperation, lil’ señorita.” He slammed Betsy into the maid’s chest, straight through to her heart. She shuddered for a few seconds before bursting into a cloud of ash that settled onto the carpet in a vaguely humanoid mound.

He wiped Betsy on his pants leg to clear it of a few errant ashes, tossed the wooden stake on the bed, then dug out his phone and redialed the last number. It rang a few times before a click signified the other end of the line connected.

“That was fast. Civvy interruption?”

Helsing remained quiet, mulling over his options. There only seemed to be one good one.

“This is Operative Swordsman. Respond.”

The old man let out frustrated huff of air. “This is Operative Necromancer. Formally requesting fireteam support.”

The other end of the line was silent. Finally, after a few moments, his handler responded. “Really, Doctor? You never-”

“Specifically,” Helsing interrupted, “requesting Operative Philosopher’s team.”

“There’s no way in Hell the Director would put that many eggs in one basket. You already have Jester there-”

“I’ve got a lead on Vayde. There's no way I can handle him alone, and are you willing to break the news that he slipped through our fingers again to Philosopher yourself, Gil?”

There were a few muttered curses on the other end of the line. “You win. If this turns out to be a wild goose chase, though…”

“I understand. I’ll break the news to her myself.” Helsing eyed the remains of the garlic necklace, most of the cloves having burnt off after he had staked the maid as she fought to stay alive. “I really don’t think I’ll have to, though. He’s here.”

He ended the phone call and sat down on the bed, his features sagging. He was too old for this shit. Helsing eyed the pile of ash on his motel room floor, and, letting out a puff of air between pursed lips, dug around in his backpack for the tool he used most often. Pulling it out of his pack, he stood and clicked the device on. It whirred to life with a loud whine. He lowered the nozzle to the ashen remains of the maid.

“Goddamn bloodsuckers,” he muttered to himself.

His hand vac clicked angrily in response after running over one of the warped silver slugs that had previously occupied the vampire’s body, the rest of her ash disappearing into the vacuum’s roaring mouth.

* * * * *

White knuckles strangled the steering wheel and his huge foot wedged the gas pedal against the floor as the metal beast below him roared with pained fury, ferrying Law to his death. The Chevy shuddered as he crossed a cattle grate, leaving the asphalt behind for a gravel road and kicking up dust into the moonless night on the final approach to the quarry. With his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed, he could only wonder, 'why?'

His headlights speared through the darkness, illuminating the chainlink boundary to the quarry ahead. Why? His truck slammed through the gate with a screech of sparking metal, sending it spinning across the ground into the darkness. Wouldn’t be long now.

Why?

He maneuvered the slight curves and bumps in the dirt road. People didn’t hate him, they treated him like he was wrong. A bur in their heel. Something to be tolerated when necessary, but picked off and thrown away at their earliest possible convenience. Even children treated him like a da- like a darn pariah. No matter who he tried to befriend, his only faithful companions over the year were pitying looks, and nights spent alone after days spent being tolerated. His hands adjusted the wheel slightly after a bump, narrowly avoiding losing control of his pickup.

Why?

Even his hallucinations ostracized him. The wood sprites were always angry with him, the man in the suit never took him seriously, and the shadows always fled when he entered a room.

Why?

She was the only one that made him felt like he belonged, like the entire world wasn’t wrong. Like he wasn’t some alien displaced onto a planet designed to rip compassion and hope from him. But, she left. She left!

“WHY?!” he screamed.

Just one more hug. Just one more of her hugs, where he felt like someone actually fu- freaking cared about his existence, where he wasn’t some irregularly shaped cog that messed up the engines of other people’s lives just barely enough that they still kept him around but never let him in.

The twin pillars of his headlights pierced true through the darkness, bathing the road in front of him up to his life's event horizon, where the road curved sharply and the light took flight over a vast expanse of emptiness. Beneath those dual beams of light clawing their path across the abandoned sky, the road began a sinuous, time-consuming descent into the bowels of the quarry a few hundred feet below. With enough speed on the first curve, one could reach the bottom a much faster way.

“You could have at least said ‘goodbye’,” he whispered with a despairing shudder. He hunched over and set his eyes on the lip of the road’s curve, the terminal salvation between aloneness and oblivion.

A large, dark form streaking through the air in his peripheral vision caused him to flinch, and he instinctively slammed on the brakes. He saw a flash of blue and white in his headlights before slamming into something with enough force to snap the front left of the truck’s frame back into the tire, shredding rubber and sending up showers of sparks as the frame melted into the steel rim. The front half of the truck lurched into the ground as the undercarriage caught earth and was torn away before the inertia lifted the bed into the air and the vehicle rolled. Law’s limbs jerked uncontrollably as his seatbelt locked up and its edges bit into his shoulder hard enough to shear through his shirt and draw blood. The truck spun through the air, large chunks of metal pirouetting off into the night’s embrace. It slammed into the ground and slid to a stop, rocking slightly and then settling with the ruined, left front wheel hanging over the edge of the cliff. A single headlight, miraculously intact, shot its light off into the abyss.

Law raised his arms shakily, grasping the steering wheel and staring out into the darkness. He was almost there. He pushed the gas pedal. Nothing happened. He rammed his leg against it harder, not realizing half his engine block littered the ground behind him. He let out a shriek of rage and started hammering at it until the pedal snapped. His leg fell slack, and he leaned forward, numbly grasping at the ignition keys before wrapping his large hand around them and switching them off. The surviving headlight died out, leaving him to the night. He rested his forehead on the steering wheel, breathing rapid, half-sobbing breaths.

“Well, I am really glad I left that Death totem with your landlady, now,” a voice to his right said. The man in the suit was in the passenger seat, his arm hanging out the shattered window and a lit cigarette in hand. His eyes seemed to flash green like an animal’s caught with a flashlight as he rolled his head towards Law. "On a completely unrelated note, I don't think you'll have to worry about any 'late fees' for a while."

Law’s dead eyes regarded him for a moment before his face scrunched up and he began sobbing. “I c-can’t even f-freaking kill myself right.”

The man in the suit regarded him with a neutral gaze, taking a drag off his cigarette.

“No one else w-wants me around,” he said, burying his face in his hand. “Not even Death.” He bashed his head into the steering wheel. Once. Twice. A warm, solid hand grasped his large shoulder, halting him before he could slam his head into it a third time. He slowly looked over. The man in the suit had a pained grimace on his face, his luminescent green eyes seeming uncertain. He loosened his grip on Law’s shoulder, before tightening it again.

“Is this-” The man drew his hand back before patting his shoulder again. “I mean, I don’t know how you all do this whole...thing. Look, it’s just-” The man in the suit brought his hand down and awkwardly squeezed Law’s shoulder again, turning his gaze out of the shattered front windshield. “I just really don’t know how to do this. Kinda wish my brother were still around, actually. He could shoulder clap with the best of them, you see. I’m just- I’m just not that.” The man paused, flicking his cigarette off into the heart of the quarry. He turned back to Law and the flare in his eyes died, leaving a pale, moonlit shade of dull jade in his irises.

“I do still want you around, okay? But right now, we really have to go back and figure out just what the fuck it was you hit. There are some things in this quarry you really don’t want to meet, and some fucking prophecy, and it's just a bunch of bullshit all around, do you understand?”

Law’s features remained blank. “You’re not real.”

The man in the suit’s eyes narrowed, tiny sparks of light again bursting to life in his eyes. He clenched his fists and brilliant green flames burst out of his eye sockets. The flames sputtered out after a few seconds, however, and the man in the suit’s features softened.

“Most people would agree with you, these days,” he said with a wan smile. "We have a lot more in common than you'd suspect, I think."

He broke eye contact and shoved the door, ripping it from its hinges and sending it off into the night air before it landed with a dull clang. He quietly stepped out of the ruined Chevy. A green light enveloped the vehicle and Law’s stomach lurched as the twisted frame was lifted and dragged backwards. It hovered in the air, the man in the suit standing on the ground in front of the levitated truck, one hand raised with his palm upturned.

“Now, let’s see just how unreal I am, then,” he said with a wink. Wisps of green mist burst out of the ground around him, spinning around his feet and upwards towards his outstretched hand. They coalesced into a single point hovering above his palm, forming a bright mote of light, before a beam shot forth and enveloped the Chevy. Law shielded his eyes as the sounds of twisting, tearing metal and dull, repetitive clinks and clanks erupted to life around him. After a few moments, the light and the sound died out, and an oppressive silence pressed in against Law’s consciousness instead. He opened his eyes, and found his truck facing back towards the quarry entrance, but slightly angled off the road. It’s keys jangled in the ignition. He reached forward and gave them a twist, sparking the engine to life.

“Now, see, that’s bonafide American engineering, for you,” the man in the suit said with a grin, lighting another cigarette before he rolled down the fully intact passenger window.

Law’s brain refused to process anything. Between the adrenaline from the accident, his depression, and the absurdity of what was (he was quite sure his doctors would insist) a hallucination involving the complete reformation of his destroyed pickup, he wasn’t sure how to respond. He slowly raised a hand, pointing out the front windshield.

“Only one headlight is on.”

The man in the suit next to him coughed, hammering his chest. “Well, uh, you see, that’s, uh,” he smacked a fist into the dashboard a few times, green sparks of electricity sparking from his hand into the truck. The second headlight remained dark. He turned to Law with a deadpan expression. “That’s why you rely on bonafide Honda engineering in the future, Law.”

Lawson was still in a daze, his finger still pointing out the windshield. There was a dark lump lying in the dusty field in front of them.

“Man in the Suit, that’s not real.”

The man in the suit glared sideways at Law. “I have a name, you know.”

“Not real,” Law breathed out.

The man in the suit eyed the lump on the ground. Midnight blue. Tangled limbs. A pair of wings, with one twisted at a painful looking angle. Matted hair that seemed to spasm as the sparkles in its length flashed intermittently. A horn.

“Nah, just as real as you or me, Law,” he said, reaching into his jacket and pulling out an ancient-looking flip phone. He dialed the one contact he had stored. As the line started ringing, he placed his hand over the receiver, and glanced towards the boy. “Really, it’s just a unicorn with wings. Or a pegasus with a horn. Probably a genetic defect or something. You'd have to ask the Greeks. Also, I’ve known you since before you could walk, Law.”

The man in the suit paused.

“I really, really wish you would just call me Loki.”