Soul Caller 1 - Chapter 39 (Patreon)

The moonlight shone through the leaves, casting dappled patterns on the forest floor as Merrick eased himself out of his pack. It was too cumbersome to carry with him in a fight, and so he left it leaning against the tree as he began to slowly reposition himself. Creeping slowly along the forest floor, Merrick was careful not to disturb any of the twigs or leaves that lay under him as he engaged in this deadly game of tag. A faint memory of hunting games he had played with his friends when he was young came to mind, but Merrick couldn’t afford to be distracted, so he banished them from his mind and focused on finding Joseph without first getting discovered himself. The shots worried him, not so much that another would come, but that they would attract the attention of the scaled beasts who had been hunting him earlier in the day. In the clear mountain air, the sound of a manatech rifle firing carried for miles, and the scaled beasts were clearly adept at identifying the location of sounds.

Drawing closer to the source of the smoke, Merrick realized that the fire had been hastily extinguished, and thought it likely that Joseph had withdrawn. Easing himself back from the edge of the camp, just in case the prospector was still around, Merrick returned to his pack, picking it up and vanishing into the woods. He had been hoping to stop and rest, but that was no longer an option. With Joseph ahead of him, positioned in between him and the pass, and the scaled beasts closing in from behind, waiting would spell a death sentence. Instead, Merrick needed to move.

For a moment, he considered turning east and making the long trek to the other pass. But he rejected that idea when he thought of the distance. The scaled beasts had clearly been moving in that direction, and it was incredibly likely that they would get to the pass before he would. That left only one other option, racing Joseph to the pass. Taking a moment to empty his pack of anything extraneous, Merrick kept only enough food for the next two days, along with his other essentials. The wolf skin coat and his blanket, along with the deer hide tent he had made, as well as the majority of his food, were all left behind so that he could travel as light as possible. He had a feeling that either he would be through the pass in two days, or he'd be dead, and extra food wouldn't help him with either. Keeping to the cover of the trees, Merrick began to jog through the woods, avoiding the exposed path.

As he traveled, he kept an eye out for any sign of an ambush, but didn't see anything. For a full day he traveled, winding up the hills and around the mountains until the pass stood before him. Though he had gained some distance from the scaled beasts who pursued him, he had seen others approaching from the west and knew that within the next ten hours, the entire mountain range would be infested with the terrible creatures. They seemed almost endless in number and were clearly intent on establishing the mountain range as their territory. When Merrick arrived at the pass, he found a surprising sight waiting for him. Joseph stood in the shadow of one of the rocks, his rifle in hand and his pistol at his belt. He had clearly been waiting for Merrick to arrive, and as Merrick stepped up into the pass, he lifted his hand.

"No fight. Talk," he said in his broken words.

Pausing at the edge of the pass, Merrick looked at Joseph, his rifle held at the ready, and then scanned the walls to either side. The pass was little more than a deep gash in the sheer stone cliffs, roughly fifteen feet wide and twenty-five feet long. The ground was uneven, but there were no places to hide. When he was confident that there wasn't an ambush waiting for him, Merrick walked forward, stopping a dozen feet from the prospector.

"Talk. What do you want to talk about?" he asked, fixing Joseph with a hard stare.

"Me, you. Go together. Safe."

It was clear that Joseph was struggling with his vocabulary, but his intent was clear enough. When he saw Merrick's quizzical glance, he gestured for him to come closer, pointing down beyond the pass. Ready for any sign of something fishy Merrick strode over, looking out the other side of the pass, down the mountain. What he saw caused his expression to harden and he let out a long hiss. There were dozens of scaled beasts who seemed to be patrolling the opposite side of the mountain. More were hidden among the rocks, remaining absolutely still. It was clear that they were guarding this pass, which was one of the two ways into the heart of the mountain range.

Studying the monsters below, Merrick considered his options. Breaking through by himself would be almost impossible, but if he were to work together with Joseph, there was a chance they might actually be able to do it. With four guns between them, they would be able to keep up a fairly sustained rate of fire, and by covering each other as they moved, it wasn't impossible that they would be able to break through the blockade. Still, that meant trusting a man he had been trying to kill for the last week, and who had made a concerted effort to kill him only a day earlier. Looking at Merrick, Joseph held up his hand.

"No harm. Me, you. We go."

Joseph's words were so garbled, Merrick nearly rolled his eyes, but he managed to keep a straight face as he nodded.

"Fine. We go. Together."

Feeling silly for his words, Merrick gestured for Joseph to lead the way. To his credit, the prospector only hesitated for a moment before turning and showing his back to Merrick, a clear testament to his courage. Feeling that the situation was rather incredible, Merrick followed Joseph as they began to carefully make their way down the side of the mountain. They were about three hundred feet from the nearest hidden scaled beast, and Merrick watched as Joseph moved like a wraith across the rocky ground. The prospector moved almost as smoothly as Merrick did, explaining how he had managed to get ahead of Merrick during their frantic escape through the mountains. He had a particular way of walking that triggered a faint memory in Merrick, but he was too focused on the coming fight to figure out what it was. They stopped when they were only fifty feet from the hidden creature, who was curled up in a depression behind a rock, and Joseph gestured for Merrick to use one of his rifles.

Pointing at himself, Joseph pointed towards a set of scaled beasts in the distance, indicating that he would fire at them at the same time. Nodding to show he understood, Merrick lifted his rifle as Joseph mirrored his action. Without waiting, Merrick pressed on the manastone, feeling the surge of energy run through his rifle, and hearing a loud crack immediately echoed by Joseph next to him. His shot went true, tearing through the middle of the scaled beast and killing it instantly, and with a smooth motion, he swapped his expended rifle for the fresh one.

Joseph had just started to lower his rifle and turn when he found Merrick holding the second rifle. Though he wasn't pointing it directly at the prospector, it was close enough to give Joseph pause. After a tense moment the prospector just grinned mirthlessly, showing his teeth as he nodded his head.

"That was a good shot," he said in his own language, not caring if Merrick understood.

The echo of the rifle shots alerted the scaled beast to their presence, and shrieks began to ring out across the mountainside. Coolly surveying the side of the mountain and the terrain in front of them, Joseph gestured for Merrick to follow and began to lead the way down towards the forest below, drawing his pistol as he waited for his rifle to recharge. There were still a few dozen scaled beasts between them and the thick forest, but as one approached, Joseph lifted his pistol and fired, scoring a clean hit that ripped its legs from its body.

Moving down the mountain as fast as they could, they shot as soon as their weapons were ready, blasting the incoming monsters apart in a steady cacophony of ringing cracks. The sound seemed to roll like thunder across the mountain and into the valley below, and it wasn't long before Merrick and Joseph heard the sound of shrieks echoing through the pass behind them. It was clear that the monsters on the other side of the mountain had realized they were there, so they did their best to speed up. Both of them were highly accurate, and every shot killed, another scaled beast, but there were more of the monsters than they had realized, and it wasn't long before they were forced to abandon their steady progress and make a mad dash down the side of the mountain.

They had focused most of their fire directly below them, clearing a path through the scaled beasts that were hidden there, but as they ran past a pile of rocks, a monster they had missed suddenly leapt out. Merrick had just shot a beast attempting to close the distance from the side and was in the middle of switching his rifles when the scaled beast leapt down on top of them. Joseph was behind him, and while Merrick could have dodged, it would have meant that the scaled beast would have skewered Joseph through the chest so he let out a roar and slammed his empty rifle forward, hoping to buy himself a moment. A flicker of motion at his side caused him to look over as Joseph’s pistol appeared beside his head and blasted the creature at point-blank range. A thick hand grabbed Merrick and pulled him to the side as the monster landed in a heap.

"Let's go," Joseph thundered, running pell-mell down the slope. Shocked at the close call and Joseph's swift action to save him from the pouncing monster, Merrick followed closely, a faint spark of disquiet burning in his heart. Soon they were at the edge of the forest and they rushed in, hoping to lose the creatures chasing them as quickly as possible. Seeing Joseph run blindly through the forest, Merrick sped up, catching up with the prospector, and tapped him on the shoulder. Joseph jumped at the unexpected touch, looking confused when Merrick gestured for him to follow.

"This way," Merrick said, grabbing Joseph's sleeve when the prospector looked at him in confusion.

Shifting directions, Merrick led them through the woods, soon coming upon a waist-high stream. As soon as he saw it, Joseph's face broke out into a grin, and he splashed through it. For two miles, they ran down the stream, stumbling with the current as Merrick pulled Joseph along. Seeing a break in the bank, Merrick dashed up onto it, with Joseph, who was exhausted, climbing out after him. Seeing Merrick's exasperated look, Joseph struggled to his feet.

"You run too fast. How are you not exhausted?" he muttered in his own tongue.

Judging that they had likely thrown off their pursuers, but that it would be a good idea to get some more distance, Merrick gestured for Joseph to follow and led the way forward at a brisk walk. Joseph was half a head shorter than Merrick, and his legs were not as long, causing him to struggle to keep up with Merrick's long stride. Realizing this, Merrick slowed down slightly, causing Joseph to nod thankfully. In silence, they traveled for close to two hours, always heading south as Merrick led the way through the forest. The mountain range on the other side of the valley was not nearly as tall as the one they had just crossed, and Merrick knew that once they reached the top of it, he would be able to see Sky Mountain in the distance. After the sun began to set, Joseph finally held up his hand.

"Stop! We stop."

He seemed to be struggling to find the right words, but gestured to the ground and mimed eating, so Merrick understood that he wanted to make camp. Though he could understand, and likely even speak the stranger's language, Merrick felt a strange reluctance to do so, and so continued to pretend he couldn't understand as Joseph muttered to himself,

"What's the word for camp? Do they have a word for camp? Ugh, I knew I should have invested in one of those translators."

Putting his pack down, Merrick dug through it, getting the last of his jerky out, and then squatted, beginning to chew on it. As he ate, he concentrated on listening to the sounds of the forest around him, tapping into the Song of the World. Joseph was doing no such thing, and apart from  keeping a healthy distance from Merrick, didn’t seem to have a care for anything. He plopped down on the ground and fumbled for something in his pouch that looked like a flat piece of bread. After inspecting it for a moment he grimaced and began to gnaw on it. Curious about what Joseph was eating, Merrick mimed breaking something in half and offered one of his pieces of jerky.

"We trade," he said.

For a moment, Joseph looked confused, and then realized what Merrick was getting at. Eyeing the meat that he was being offered, he quickly nodded and snapped the wafer in two, offering a piece of it to Merrick in exchange for the venison jerky. From the way the venison jerky disappeared into his mouth and was swallowed down, it was clear that he thought he had gotten the better end of the deal. After inspecting the piece of wafer that he had been given, Merrick licked it, frowning at the strange texture. It tasted almost chalky, and its flavor was strangely sweet. Merrick didn't like it much, but he could feel the powdery substance that it consisted of expanding in his mouth, and as he swallowed it, he realized that it was some sort of compressed food. He was familiar enough with compressed food as soul warriors and hunters on long trips would often take compressed cakes of grain that were similar to this, using it to fill their bellies when other food wasn't available, or when they had long distances to travel.

Finishing it up in two bites, he could feel the food sitting in his stomach like a rock, and realized why Joseph had grimaced before eating it. He’d honestly rather eat bugs that have another wafer, and when Joseph pulled another one from his pouch, he quickly shook his head and stuffed the rest of the jerky in his mouth, causing his cheeks to bulge.