Heretical Edge

Note: Previously at this rift, Flick met up with Sands and Sarah in the middle of an Old West Town shortly before they were ushered out of sight by the fearful townspeople. Before they could discuss much, the town was attacked by Alter bandits led by a man known as Saign. Sands jumped in to help the people, followed shortly by Flick and Sarah. At the end of the ensuing fight, Saign transported himself, all his goons, and all the civilians away and left those three alone in the now empty town.

"Uh, Flick, what are you doing?" Sands' voice cut into my thoughts, as I stood in the middle of that dirt road that had led into this small Old West town. A town that was now devoid of any living people other than her, Sarah, and me, after all its inhabitants had been abducted by an Alter bandit gang led by some guy who called himself Saign. A minute ago, Sands had asked me to explain what was going on, why we were all here in the past, any of it. Instead of talking immediately, however, I had held up a hand for her to wait a moment before closing my eyes to focus. To her credit, she was patient for probably about as long as I could reasonably expect under the circumstances. This was a lot to expect the two of them, or anyone, to just roll with.

But on the other hand, I was busy focusing. So Wordsmith answered her instead. "The people, civilians, innocents of this town were taken, abducted, stolen by that evil and terrible man and his gang or collective group of malcontent criminals. We--you two and ourself-- need to save them. But to save them--townspeople and innocents-- we must be able to track them down."

My eyes were closed, but I could feel Sarah and Sands both turn to stare at each other as they absorbed all that. Which was followed by Sands making a couple aborted attempts to try to say something, only managing to make soft, confused sounds. Finally, she gave a wide shrug at her sister and gestured as though indicating that she had no idea how to actually respond right then.

It was Sarah who finally spoke up, her voice soft. "We aren't talking to Flick right now, are we?"

I could actually hear Sands do a sharp double-take at that, a sound of realization escaping her, as well as a noise of obvious suspicion as she took a step to the side, summoning her mace. "What do you mean, we aren't talking to Flick right now? Who the hell are we talking to then?"

"You are both-- the two of you-- talking and conversing with a Felicity Chambers," Wordsmith calmly informed them. I would have spoken up, but I was honestly barely paying attention right then. Most of my focus was centered on my plan. "But and however, I myself, the one who is speaking and responding to you, am not the specific Felicity Chambers you are accustomed to. You may refer to me by the name, moniker, tag of Wordsmith. Or simply Smith if you prefer."

"I have so many questions," Sands managed, voice audibly strained. "But also, that fits right in with the sort of confusing stuff Flick gets herself into all the time, so sure, why not? I think I'd be even more confused if this situation wasn't confusing. Or… something. But whatever, so where is our Flick now? And why are we talking to--what, Felicity from a different timeline or something?"

"I'm still here," I finally put in, since I'd done enough by that point to take my attention off it. My eyes opened, and I looked to the twins with a slight wince. "Sorry, we kind of got interrupted a lot back there before I could explain anything. I meant to get into it first, but--yeah. I'm here, I'm still Flick. But I also have Wordsmith, and--okay that's a whole story. I'll tell you about it on the way. Those people need help, and I don't know about you guys, but I'm not gonna just let Saign and his people do whatever they want." Besides, I still didn't know where the rift was, and I was willing to bet that tracking down those bastards was as good a chance as any at finding it. Even if it wasn't where they were, they might have the technology to track down that sort of thing.

"You know where they went?" Sarah immediately asked, immediately cutting through any of the other myriad of very big questions both of them obviously had to focus on what was important.

"If she doesn't," Sands put in, "we can always ask the--" She cut herself off, then cursed loudly and creatively while holding up that glass bowling ball thing she had used to shrink down and imprison four of those guys. The ball was empty. "Okay, that's really annoying. That jackass even managed to teleport his friends out of my prison ball? I hope they're at least still small. That'd be--" Focusing on the actual situation, she shook that off. "Whatever, you can find them?"

"I have their trail," I confirmed. "They may have teleported out of here, but they rode in. I was sending ghosts out to find the tracks and figure out where they veered off the road. We can follow that. I just hope they actually teleported back to the same general area they rode in from."

"I hope you've got a better plan than just walking there, because it looks like they even teleported the horses out of here, and I don't think--" Sands started to note, before catching herself. "Oh wait, you can do the werelion thing, huh? Is this the part where we catch a ride?"

"It is the part where we catch a ride," I confirmed with a smile despite myself. "But not on me."

"I knew it," Sarah immediately put in, brightening a bit. "I knew I felt something. That was you."

"Uh, what was her?" Sands looked back and forth between us. "Wait, is this a Necromancy thing?" To me, the girl added, "She's been running through so many extra Necromancy lessons with that Brom Bones guy on top of everything else we're doing, I don't know when she sleeps."

"Yeah, it's a Necromancy thing," I confirmed. "Because you were right, Saign took all the horses. Probably to stop us from being able to track them down very easily. Or maybe just because he thought it was funny to leave us stranded like this, who knows? Either way, we needed a ride." After a very brief pause to wince inwardly, I added, "Just try not to think about it too much."

Sands started to ask what I meant by that, before stopping at the sound of the ground about a hundred feet away groaning as it began to shift and move under the force of something pushing upward. Her head tilted, taking in the shuddering dirt, followed by the very distinctive yet muffled sound of a whinny. As soon as she heard that, the other girl gave a soft, low groan. "Oh no."

Sure enough, the ground finished breaking apart, as a very dead but also very animated horse shoved its way up from the dirt. The thing was half-decomposed, with a fair part of its skeleton showing through a hole in its side. It was joined by two others in similar condition that drove themselves up from the general areas they had been buried in. And just like that, we had three zombie horses stamping the dirt and whinnying as they shook the dirt off their rotting bodies. It would've been even worse in sight and smell, but my Necromancy had already cleared any maggots and other… things out of the bodies before they pushed their way up, and I was using a spell that was similar to the one Fossor had used when he made his zombies make food or spend much of any time around him. It basically covered the body in a thin, malleable shell, like magic plastic wrap so the smell and anything else it might give off would stay safely inside. Which didn't really make the overall prospect all that easier to accept, but it was something.

"Sorry, Sands," I offered with a weak shrug while already moving that way, "but we really do need to get moving. This is the best way. I promise, they're completely safe. Right, Sarah?"

"Safe for us," the other girl agreed while taking her reluctant sister's hand to pull her over to the other two dead horses. She was already pulling a small, polished stone from her pocket with a Necromancy spell engraved in it. As soon as she pressed it against her horse's side, I released my hold and let her take over. "Maybe less safe for any other brains they might want to eat." At the same time, Sarah was pulling a bag out of one of her pockets, unfolding it to reveal something much larger than what should have fit in there. It was a duffel bag. After shoving her entire arm down inside there and rooting around briefly, she started pulling out several actual saddles, passing two of them to us before quickly securing the last one to her own undead ride. Fortunately, these were special saddles. All we had to do was set the saddle on the animal's back and touch a prepped spell on the side while giving the activation word and the rest would happen automatically. It produced the pad, the blanket, hooked the straps under the horse properly, all of it. I'd seen these before, at the Fusion School, but never used them quite like this.

"But you're the ones controlling them," Sands protested even as she grimaced and heaved the saddle up onto her zombie horse. "So they don't actually need to go after brains, or anything else. Also, why do you happen to have three horse saddles in your bag, Sarah?" She got that much out while grabbing the side of her horse to pull herself up on it somewhat awkwardly.

"They're zombies," Sarah replied primly, already following suit to pull herself up into her own saddle. "They should eat brains. We'll find some they can munch on." She gave me a glance, then added, "And I don't have three horse saddles. I have six horse saddles. Be prepared."

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Once we were all situated on the dead horses and as ready as we could be, Sands asked, "How far are we from where our new friends went off the road and started moving cross-country?"

"A few miles," I replied, "but don't worry, we're gonna take a quick little shortcut to that part." Even as they started to ask what I meant by a shortcut, I was already focusing. There was a ghost hovering near that part of the hard-packed dirt road a few miles down, waiting for this. All I had to do was look through her eyes, and a second later we were there, without any other warning. It might've been enough to make the horses freak out a bit, but they were zombie horses, so they gave no reaction at all. Well, no reaction aside from Sarah's mount, which was just as silent and motionless as the other two at first, until its rider took in the situation, decided that the horse should react, and made the thing rear backward and give a loud, startled whinny.

Also startled: Sands. "Wha--" The girl jerked on the dead horse, looking back and forth before focusing on me. "Oh, this is like when you teleported out of that building back there, isn't it? You got a new power." She paused briefly before adding, "A pretty strong one. I didn't even feel anything from that. We were just in one spot, then another. What--how far can you go with it?"

Already urging the horses to start following the trail as it led off the road and into the desert, I shrugged a bit self-consciously. "Uh, basically anywhere on Earth if I'm close enough to the planet?" As the two gave a double-take (three, since Sarah made her horse do it too), I added, "It's a long story. Which you probably expected, but trust me, it's even more than you think."

Looking down at the ground for a moment, I tried to see the signs of passage that several of my ghosts were using to lead us after our quarry. I picked up a couple things, but nothing anywhere near as detailed as what my tracker ghosts could do. I had both Avonaco, the Native American, and Francis, the European settler, working on that. They were a couple of the ghosts I had recruited back when Ehn first brought me back to the past, from that haunted forest surrounding the underground coffin with that tape recorder that had the message urging me to stop Maestro. Which, god damn it, how long ago had that been, a decade or two? It sure felt like it sometimes.

Shaking that off, I took a breath. "But I feel like we've got some time right now, so here goes."

I gave them as much of a summary of what I had been up to as I could over the next twenty minutes or so. Some of it was pretty thoroughly abbreviated, and I would have to get into more details later, but I managed to get the basic gist across. I told them about the message in the coffin that led me to what Maestro was trying to do, the aftermath of stopping him (obviously leaving out the part where I'd realized why he had been after Dare for so long) and how it had led me to have this teleportation power. Then I got into the reveal that I'd actually helped make Laramie Falls exist, as well as that part where I'd met a younger Gaia while undercover to save Millersby. Which already would've been more than enough to pile on them, but it only led me into the whole Ankou thing, the tower, and the fact that I wasn't exactly human anymore. They uhh, yeah, they had to take a bit to absorb all that, understandably. I'd lived through it and still felt like I needed a lot more time to absorb it. Maybe a few extra months or so would suffice.

"You're a Fae now?" Sands demanded, sitting up straighter on her horse while giving me a long stare. "A Reaper Fae? I mean, Ankou Fae, sure. And you've got a bunch of other Flicks living in your Ankou Fae Archive? What-- how is-- I don't--" She stopped talking, glancing at her twin with a helpless, overwhelmed look before settling on a low whistle followed by a very quiet, "Wow."

"Yeah, that's fair," I agreed with an easy shrug before giving them a sly look. "And I haven't even gotten to the part where I fought Ruthers as Jacob to stop them from destroying Laramie Falls."

Yup, that one got a reaction out of them. If the twins had been drinking anything liquid, it would have ended up all over their zombie horses. Maybe I should've brought out a couple canteens to see if I could've made that happen. In unison, the two twisted to stare at me, mouths falling open as they both made sounds of confusion and disbelief. Sarah found her voice first. "Um, what?"

So, after making sure we were still on the right trail (it really was a good thing that I had Avonaco and Francis because there was absolutely no way I could have followed this trail with my own skill), I continued the story. I told them what had happened with Ruthers and the rest of those early Heretics he'd brought to town. But it wasn't until I was done with that part of the story that I found out why the twins had reacted as much as they did, and it was about more than Ruthers.

"Yeah, that's amazing and all," Sands quickly put in as soon as I got through all that. "I mean, not to downplay it or anything, cuz seriously, you fought Ruthers in your own hometown? After creating that hometown? But you said Jacob, as in you. As in you're Jacob? As in what the hell?"

I blinked at that. "Wait, you've heard of Jacob the Necromancer? I mean the whole reason I made him up was to avoid changing the timeline by letting people see a blonde necromancer girl named Felicity so I guess it makes sense that I'd start getting a rep. I mean he would, but I didn't expect it to be big enough for you guys to-- wait, why didn't I hear about him then? I mean me."

"You said you were Jacob in front of Gaia, right? That's why you made him up in the first place?" That was Sarah. "She probably realized who you really were as soon as you inherited Manakel's power and took steps to stop you from learning anything about Jacob to protect the timeline."

Sands nodded. "You wouldn't have used the name if you'd heard about Jacob in the present."

They, the two of them, sisters alike make a valid and true point, Wordsmith noted, sounding thoughtful. But if Gaia truly and honestly knew who we were from the moment - second we gained this power, that would mean she knew… much - a lot - many things would happen to us.

Shrugging inwardly, I pointed out, I'm pretty sure she could've guessed that without knowing anything about the Jacob stuff. But yeah, she was keeping a lot of stuff secret, huh? To the point of actively stopping us from hearing about 'him.' We're gonna have to ask her about it once we get back to the present and rescue her. Which, for the record, is going to the top of the to-do list.

Wordsmith agreed, and I started to respond outloud, before stopping as Francis appeared in front of us, both hands raised for us to stop. Once we did, the horses halting immediately, the old colonial explorer turned to look off in the distance. We had been moving along the base of a long, low range of hills to our left, and a wide, sort of snake-like, twisting lake to the right that was barely visible through the very occasional break in an otherwise very thick stand of trees.

Francis was looking slightly forward and to the left, toward the next hill along the range. I could see Avonaco there, sort of crouched down by a large boulder. A quick glance through his eyes revealed a hidden trail that we couldn't even see from here. It went up that way and around that rock, passing through a sort of u-shaped dip in that hill that continued on over the next one too. There was visible smoke from campfires coming up from some area just beyond there, and the faint sound of distant voices. More importantly, when I urged Avonaco to focus on the trees lining the area where that u-shaped dip started, I could make out what seemed to be actual cameras set up there. Well, they basically looked like telescopes mounted to several of those trees, and they slowly turned back and forth as though looking in as many directions as possible. So yeah, I was willing to bet they were cameras, probably with infrared and such. It was possible the ghosts could get closer, especially if they went through the hills or--wait, no. Looking closer through Avonaco's eyes, I could see a series of runes inscribed along the rocky sides of the hills leading toward that hidden camp. I didn't recognize all, or even most of the spells being used there, but I did know enough to realize some of them were meant to alert the people in there about any nearby Necromancy, including ghosts or the like. If Avonaco had gone any closer, they probably would've gone off.

Which, I realized belatedly, was why they stopped. He'd recognized what the symbols meant too. So we couldn't actually sneak the ghosts closer for a better look, because I was willing to bet those spells ran all the way around their camp. We needed another way to do this, and I really didn't feel like taking forever. I wanted to get in there, rescue those townspeople, deal with this Saign guy and his thugs, and then get to that rift.

Once I explained what was going on and why I couldn't get a closer look at the camp over there, Sarah pulled the rifle off her shoulder, checking it before lifting the scope to her eye to aim at a spot directly behind one of those cameras. She sighted in, made sure her weapon was silenced, then pulled the trigger. When her shot reached the spot she had sighted in on, it created one of her scope-portals right there behind the camera, hidden from any of the others.

From there, she did the same thing a couple more times, carefully aiming through those scope-portals so she could move her view closer and closer to the camp. Finally, Sarah managed to plant the final one up above what she described as some sort of wooden watchtower at the opening of a circular camp inside a crater-like impression at the top of that hill.

For a moment, after getting that view, Sarah was silent as she took in what she could see. Sands and I, meanwhile, waited as patiently as possible. Finally, she lowered the rifle and looked at the two of us. "Well," she started quietly, "that's different."

"What? What do you see?" Sands quickly pressed her sister.

There was a brief pause before the other girl answered. "They have all the townspeople there."

She offered the rifle to me first, so I looked through the scope. Sure enough, there were several low fences and spiked logs surrounding the large circular encampment, along with a scattering of more advanced tech like cameras and turrets. Throughout the camp itself were a mixture of old tents, a few cabins, and a couple actual small shuttlecraft. It was all a weird mix of sci-fi stuff mixed with what you'd find in--well, the Old West.

Either way, right in the middle of the camp was another circular fence, this one chainlink, surrounding all the prisoners. Just like she said, it looked like all the townspeople were there.

But then my attention was drawn to a figure stepping out of one of those cabins, a figure who straightened up in the bright sun and surveyed the prisoners. His prisoners, not Saign's. They had to be his. Because there was no way in hell the man I was looking at would have allowed Saign to actually be in charge.

He may have been a lot of things, but Fossor was never second fiddle.