Still, there was something nice about looking at the desolate wastes, something calming. It should’ve been boring and she remembered that in the past, in her time as junior Warden, she did find it boring to be on the lookout. Back then, it felt like they were doing nothing, remaining passive and reactionary when they should actively seek out threats instead.

  Nowadays, despite her never-ending font of energy, she preferred the calm scenery. She could take a guess as to why that was the case, what had changed since the old days… but she’d rather not.

  It was better to enjoy and embrace this tranquility, in environment as well as in her own mind.

  17. Rumble in the Redwater – August 15, Year 216

  There was a man walking the Cannibal Plains. The figure did so leisurely, seemingly without purpose and completely at home in the notorious environment. The figure had his hands in the pockets of his no-doubt stolen Grandie outfit, bloodstained as they were, affecting nonchalance. Yet, he had been doing so since at least this morning.

  Sally had spotted him only today, when he was around three to five miles away from her and Lucy’s location. He hadn’t bothered to hide himself and for a moment Sally had hoped that he hadn’t spotted them walking on the other side of the Red Circuit. But as the day went on, the man seemed to always be closing in on their exact location, albeit oddly, deliberately slow.

  Despite his seeming slowness, however, he was closing in on them, moving within a mile of where they’d planned on spending the night. Why the man pretended not to see them, not to be chasing them, Sally didn’t know, nor did she care to find out.

  While Sally had only spotted him today, she suspected he might’ve been watching them since the day before, when they crossed the Redwater. She’d been expecting an ambush or that it was at least occupied. But unlike when they crossed the Madus nearly two weeks ago, there was neither a camp nor an ambush waiting for them.

  Now she believed it was because the lone cannibal – for that was undoubtedly what he was – had taken position away from the bridge and further in the Cannibal Mountains, where he could watch over the bridge from miles away.

  It didn’t really matter anyway. What mattered was that they were being hunted. Worse, they weren’t being zealously chased by a crazed-out, constantly-howling band of cannibals, but by a single individual. One that was clearly not a ‘novice’ at this, or whatever one would call a beginner man-eater.

  After all, if he were, he would’ve been eaten long ago in the comfort of his own mountain-home.

  Sally watched the figure for a moment longer. For a second, she swore the cannibal looked directly at her, their gaze meeting even though neither them should be able to see the other’s eyes from this distance. Deciding she knew enough, Sally slid down from the dune she’d been lying on.

  “He still there?” Lucy asked, disquiet clear in voice and bearing.

  “Yep,” Sally replied, feigning calm. “And closing in, as expected.”

  Lucy had held out hope that the man was patrolling and hadn’t spotted them, but Sally hadn’t. There was no way they would be that lucky. Now was the time to enact a plan.

  They walked the quarter-mile from the road to the river, after which Sally pulled off her boots and rolled up her pant-sleeves. She gave Lucy her bag and crouched down, allowing Lucy to climb up on her back. The pilgrim wrapped her arms around Sally’s neck and looped her legs around her waist, holding on as tightly as she could.

  They’d already discussed what to do ever since it became clear to Sally that the cannibal wouldn’t relent. The plan was simple: walk as far as possible, until they got to a part where the distance between the Redwater and the Red Circuit was at its slightest. Then, Sally would carry Lucy on her back and wade through the water to the other side. From there, in order for the cannibal to reach them, he would have to cross the Redwater and the incline they’d position themselves on, giving them a clear and easy target and allowing Lucy to prepare whatever spell she needed.

  It was more than a little risky. Sally didn’t know the waters well, and although Lucy had said it didn’t attack quickly, there were few stories and fewer people about actual experiences with wading through its waters.

  But what other option did they really have? Staying in place would mean fighting the cannibal on more even grounds. Sally had no clue on what kind of abilities the cannibal possessed, but at the very least they were incredibly difficult to kill. Lucy had no great counter either, at least nothing like their fight with the Silver Demon. They would simply have to rely on raw firepower, tactics and Lucy’s magic.

  Whether that would be enough, well, they were about to find out.

  The Redwater was a simple enough river to understand. It was blood-red in color – thus the name – and highly corrosive, capable of eating anything and everything when given enough time. It was wider than most rivers in the Grand Circuit, but also shallower. The deepest it got would barely come halfway up to her knee.

  Supposedly, it was comprised of the blood of the many unholy acts committed within the Cannibal Mountains, two-hundred years of ceaseless slaughter and demonic feasts giving the river its hue and character: red and devouring.

  Sally thought it just like any other river in the Grand Circuit; strange, unique and deadly.

  With Lucy on her back, Sally took her first step into the caustic waters. The first step was without pain, merely a simple fizzing sensation caressing her legs, but with every step she took, the feeling intensified. The fizzing became a gnawing, like a thousand insects taking tiny bites of her skin. Then it became a burn of an ever-increasing intensity, rivalling the pain of the silver flames of the Half-Knight Demon – the little she’d felt of it at the time, at least.

  Then, it burned even more.

  Sally liked to believe she was used to pain, and maybe she was. She’d had broken bones before, suffered through burns, stabs and lacerations aplenty and even poison one time. Everything paled in comparison to this. It felt like she was being slowly disassembled by invisible demons butchering her to get at the very core of her being, all the while scrounging for every possible scrap of meat she had to give.

  If she still had the space for thought, she might’ve wondered if the Redwater’s relation to the cannibals had some merit after all.

  Despite the pain, however, the Redwater was anything but quick. While it ate at her ankles stubbornly, and while it felt as if flesh was pulled from bone at a rapid pace, the reality was that the process went very slow. And while Sally refused to run out of fear of falling into the water, Lucy in tow, she kept up a steady, stubborn pace. Near-mindless and with eyes narrowed, she kept moving.

  Her eyes were stinging and watering and the slight clammy sweat had turned long turned pouring when the terrain under her transformed from wet to dry.

  Immediately, Sally surged forward, a quick few steps before immediately stumbling, effectively throwing them into the sand.

  Lucy quickly leapt off her back. Sally felt herself being rolled over before her legs were heaped in sand, after which Lucy began rubbing her lags raw. Once Sally got the idea, she quickly followed, her own hand adding to Lucy’s.

  There was a slight corrosiveness to the wet sand she scraped off her legs, and her hands were slowly beginning to itch, but the pain began fading rapidly.

  They kept it up for a minute before Sally stopped, Lucy quickly following.

  “You good?” Lucy asked, slightly out of breath. The pilgrim hovered over her, eyes fixed on Sally’s own.

  Sally lay in the sand for a moment longer, heavily panting before straightening up and wiping off the last bits of sand. She examined her legs. They were extremely red, both from the rubbing and the river, and had some minor bumps all across them. But no blisters had formed, let alone wounds.

  She turned to Lucy and gave the woman a quick and shaky couple of nods, still catching her breath. “Not my brightest idea,” Sally groaned wryly. Though she still believed it was the best they had.

  Lucy huffed in response, but didn’t say anything.

  After a few seconds, Sally and Lucy stood up and began walking away from the river, moving up an incline overlooking the water. There, they prepared as best they could.

  Sally stowed extra magazines for her Guardsman pistol in her belt and positioned herself slightly in front and to the right of Lucy. Meanwhile, Lucy lay down in the sand at the highest point, Scarab rifle at the ready and spare ammunition in a bag to her side.

  All that was left to do was wait.

  “Do you have any spells that could help out?” Sally asked, more to fill the time than anything else.

  “I doubt any of ‘em will do better than a rifle round,” Lucy replied. The answer was as expected. If the pilgrim had options, she’d likely have mentioned it sooner.

  Sally’d long figured Lucy didn’t have much in the way of combat-oriented magic. Which was fine, of course. Such a role would be at odds with her being a holy woman, and while the blessings the pilgrim received from Lake Prior could encompass such things, the Dekantists priests weren’t renowned for their combat prowess. Still, there was no harm in asking.

  There was one other idea, however. “Any way you can keep him lock in the waters?” Sally had heard of Leagueran magic like it, magic that could freeze a person in place for a time, although the details and duration of them differed from source to source. Considering the Dekantists connection the waters of the Grand Circuit, maybe they had something like it.

  Lucy took her time to think before answering. “I suppose there is one… but it’s a bit tricky. The target needs to keep in the same place for some time and in water before the effects kick in. And even then, he might break free if he struggles enough.”

  Sally frowned at that. “Seems a bit counterproductive,” she said. “The target needs to stay still in order to trap them in place?”

  “That’s because it’s supposed to be a meditation aid,” Lucy replied. “The main feature is that it allows someone to go without breath while underwater, and that it helps them remain still. But if the person panics, the spell releases cause its voluntary. I have to twist the spell a lot for it to be usable against someone unwilling.”

  Sally simply hummed in reply. She supposed that made sense, even if it was unfortunate. Still, good to have the option, she thought.

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  Thus, the plan remained: shoot the cannibal from their position and hope the rain of bullets and the Redwater are either enough to scare him off, or kill him outright.

  They sat in silence, muscles tense and firearms at the ready.

  Looking over the river, eyes scouting the opposite hills as they waited for the cannibal to appear… It reminded Sally uncomfortably of the time in the gully, even if it was nothing like it. Not the terrain, not the enemies, not the people with her. And yet, the failure of the past weighed heavy on her mind.

  The particulars might be different, but nevertheless, a failure here meant the same as the failure back then: the loss of the people she cared about most.

  As the wait stretched on, Sally felt her muscles’ tension increase, felt her eyes narrow and field of vision tunneling.

  Stop it! She admonished herself, shaking her head. But, but it did nothing. She could feel a cold sweat bubbling underneath her skin, hands cramping uncomfortably, and ankles and feet starting to reignite the river’s burn.

  Then, a figure appeared over the hill on the other side of the river, and it was as if a switch was flipped in her mind, her focus returning.

  The man was, much like before, walking nonchalantly, hands in pockets. The figure was young and pale, paler than Lucy and paler than should be possible for anyone living in the Circuits. His black hair was slicked straight back, his black pits serving as eyes visible despite the distance, and his three-piece suit dirty and tattered in places despite the high quality.

  Upon spotting them on the other side of the river, the cannibal shot them a smug smile, teeth a bright white in the light of the setting sun. It was simultaneously charming – the charisma of confidence shining through – and predatory – a wolf eyeing a snack.

  If it weren’t for the white undershirt red with dried-out blood, she could imagine the man walking and living in some far-off, densely populated Grandie city, living the life of some elite businessman’s son.

  Some part tucked far away joked that, even with the bloody undershirt and grisly trophies, he still could.

  For a second, both sides simply stared at each other, until the cannibal took his hands out of his pockets and took a step down the hill.

  Lucy fired a shot from her rifle, but before the bullet left the barrel the man had already moved, pre-judging the trajectory and moving to dodge accordingly.

  That he could do so from this distance…

  Sally aimed her pistol and began rapidly firing, repeating the tactic she’d done with the Half-Knight. There was some measure of aim, but it was more of a guess, a faint hope that one would hit. More importantly, it would hopefully distract the man from paying attention to Lucy’s next round.

  But it seemed not to be. The man barely moved at the barrage, only changing his slow march to the river once to dodge her fifth or sixth bullet. When Lucy fired her rifle, aim much better than hers, the man dodged again and then again, taking to dodging as if it were a dance, unbothered by the danger.

  The cannibal’s walk might be casual, it was also steady. After Sally fired all seven rounds and Lucy fired her third, the man reached the river.

  A moment of silence fell again. The cannibal stared at the river, smile replaced by a frown as he stared down. For a brief moment, Sally felt hope that the river might be a deterrent, a step too far, an effort too much for what was to be too small a meal.

  Then, the man lifted his head and looked at them, smile brighter and more mocking than before. If it weren’t clear before, it was now: the man was playing with his food.

  She rapidly put the gun in her holster to reload it, but before she could a loud bang sounded from across the river, along with an upward blast of fire erupting from where the man stood. Or rather, had stood, for the man was gone.

  Teleportation! Sally thought. For what else could it be? The now-familiar instinct was triggered, heightening her perceptions and reactions, both sharpening and quickening to the level she had when fighting the Kispan Dalqa, perhaps even beyond.

  Her hand shot to her chest and withdrew her shotgun. She turned around to Lucy, still lying on the ground and too slow to react to what was about to happen.

  A flame in the shape of a man appeared, collapsing in on itself. It was as if the fire tried to construct the cannibal from the center outward, filing in more and more details as it went. Within the moment, the figure was fully fleshed out and the cannibal appeared at the same time as the fire dissipated.

  The cannibal looked at lucy with predation, leg lifting to stomp down on the pilgrim’s back.

  Sally fired her shotgun, the slug round rapidly approaching to man, yet clearly visible in this heightened perception of time she now occupied. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only living there.

  Before the slug could hit the cannibal, the man’s form collapsed into another burst of flames, and he disappeared again in a quick flesh that singed Lucy’s clothes.

  Figuring her opponent’s basic strategy and guided by her instinct, she violently kicked backwards with her right leg. A grunt of pain sounded from behind and Sally twisted to transform the kick into a quick turn, thumbing the selector and switching from the empty barrel to the buckshot.

  She’d kicked the man in the knee, hard. It had bent and twisted the leg far back, perhaps far enough to break. But it didn’t matter, or wouldn’t soon enough.

  Sally aimed Lucy’s gift and pulled the trigger.

  A hail of lead slammed into the cannibal. Chunks of meat were torn from his arms, legs and chest. Rib and sternum cracked under the force of the impact and one pellet hit the right part of his lower jaw, shattering and half-detaching it from his skull.

  And yet, the man was still alive and moving.

  A fist went toward her kidney, but instead of moving backwards to dodge or catching the blow on her ribs, Sally chose to close the distance. Positioning a leg around him, Sally hooked her arm below the cannibal’s armpit and around his upper body.

  She went for the throw, but before she could complete it the cannibal headbutted her in the nose.

  The sharp pain didn’t throw her back, but stunned her just long enough for the cannibal to release himself from her grip and create a bit of distance. Then, her opponent threw another punch toward her kidney, this time with his left.

  Sally had no choice but to twist and let it impact on her ribs. They broke under the force, the sound of them cracking reverberating through her body. No doubt it would be immensely painful once she was no longer carried by adrenaline, but it was not fatal.

  Nor did she allow it to slow her down.

  With the shotgun still in hand, Sally went for the uppercut, attempting to drive the barrels through the gap of the man’s dangling lower jaw and up his palate, aiming to collapse his nasal cavity.

  Unfortunately, the man threw his head backward far enough to dodge the strike. The cannibal punched her with his right this time, again aiming at her side. She didn’t move, not even to catch it on her ribs like last time, and simply took it. The man-eater’s awkward position severely weakened the impact.

  Again, Sally moved forward, this time hooking her right leg behind his left, charging in to push him over or otherwise to tackle him.

  Her foe dodged backward, arms flailing up as he stepped over her outstretched leg. It left him open and unbalanced. Sally pushed the advantage and her left leg shot out towards his right, putting all the force she could muster behind it.

  It was the leg she’d hit when he teleported behind him, the leg whose knees she’d hoped to break with her backwards kick, the one that had left him open to the buckshot in the first place. It was to be the crippling blow.

  But despite the force of the kick, despite the wound from her buckshot and despite the first strike to her opponent’s knee, it still wasn’t enough. The cannibal caught the blow on his ankle, foot shifting in the sand and leg twisting in response, but upright nevertheless. He put his left foot down, and this time, Sally was the one out of position enough for the man-eater to try and disable her.

  While it might’ve felt like they’d been fighting more than a minute, only a few seconds had passed in real-time. This, however, had been enough for Lucy to shift position, aim her rifle and fire at the precise moment Sally was vulnerable.

  But with the same eerie clairvoyance as before, the cannibal shifted again, just enough for the bullet to cleanly pass him by. The man’s eyes shifted to Lucy and terror struck down Sally’s spine.

  Sally moved to grab moments before the figure disappeared in a flashfire, reforming himself in front of Lucy’s now-seated form. He stomped his foot downward on the pilgrim’s right knee – some form of revenge? – and Lucy cried out in pain.

  Sally ran toward them, dropping her shotgun into the sand in favor of pulling her knife. The cannibal turned towards her, mockery clear in the black pits of his eyes even if the lack of a properly attached lower jaw prevented a smile.

  Sally dashed toward the cannibal, stopping on a dime and twisting her body to add extra force to the stab. She aimed at the cannibal’s heart, with all the speed, power and anger she could muster, a stab as vicious as it was precise…

  And the cannibal let her. Why wouldn’t he? If he could survive and move with ease even after a point-blank scattershot, what would a simple knife matter?

  Sally recognized her mistake too late. The knife entered the cannibal’s chest with ease, but he remained unbothered. And now she was locked into position.

  She’d outplayed him every step of the way: she’d shot him point-blank, outmaneuvered him in close quarters despite catching stray blows and even stabbed him cleanly through the heart. If it were anyone or anything else, she’d have come out on top with relative ease.

  But the cannibal’s sheer survivability was too much for her to overcome.

  With uncanny precision, the cannibal’s hand shot upward from below, breaking through her skin and entering her guts from underneath her solar plexus. With unerring precision, the cannibal in turn found her heart, and pulled it out.

  Sally fell backwards, pain from the blow, from every blow she’d caught during the fight catching up in a single, agonizing moment, dousing nearly all senses in overwhelming agony.

  Nearly all, except for one: the beating of her heart. She could neither feel the cannibal’s grip around it, nor the squeezes he gave as he held it, but the heartbeat was felt clearly, unceasing despite vacating her body.

  Through a haze of pain, Sally saw the man-eater holding her heart in his left hand, examining it with curiosity, while his right hand grabbed his jaw and fixed it back in place. The foul magic of his ways, the lifeforce stolen from who-knows how many people healed it in an instant, re-attaching it.

  Of course, the cannibal immediately began monologuing.

  “‘What I thought to be a meal once but fine,” the cannibal said, tone theatrically lecturing, gaze shifting from her beating heart to Lucy. “Turned out to be holy,” He paused for a second, turning his eyes on Sally. “And divine.’”

  He began pacing back and forth in front of them. “I spoke those words to my mentor during my tutelage. A Drover-man, he fancied himself a mystic,” he said, back facing towards them. Then, he paused and turned, a reminiscent smile on his face. “Of course, that was before I consumed him.”

  He exhaled, the sigh mired in nostalgia as he stared upwards at the scant stars revealed at twilight. “I thought it was a prophecy about my turn toward the path of power, one fulfilled at my first proper meal,” he spoke, staring at the stars a moment longer, before looking down at Sally’s heart again. “I suppose even the greatest minds make mistakes.”

  “But it seems only now the stars of fate properly align. For what now lies before me?” He turned his eyes towards Lucy, pointing at the whimpering pilgrim with his right hand. “A pilgrim most holy,” he said solemnly.

  Then his gaze turned reverend, eyes focusing once again at the heart as he lifted it toward the sky, as if offering it to the stars.

  His face turned twisted. Mockery was long gone; the theatrics were over and done with, and what was left was the face of the primordial predator, teeth watering and eyes gleaming as it looked at its meal.

  “And a meal most divine,” he snarled, the silk-smooth voice of an arrogant youth turning into an unrestrainedly animalistic one in a flash.

  In the same instant, he took a savage bite out of it.

  Immediately, Sally felt as if all her veins constricted, then convulsed like a cramping muscle. Her blood turned to ice so cold it burned, the liquid spreading like a briar-bush with blossoming burrs. Yet still, she didn’t pass out.

  And she wasn’t the only one in agony.

  The man-eater’s cannibalistic fervor had turned into the panicking cries, whimpers and yelps of a hurt animal, writhing in the sands. Blood was dripping from his every orifice, weeping from every wound and even his pores let bloom small blood-flowers.

  As the wounds of the cannibal increased, she felt her own reverse. What Lucy had once described to her – tiny rivers of blood, carrying tiny chunks of her body from who-knows-where to the central wound below her chest – she now saw happening in real-time.

  She felt she should’ve long since passed out, but was thankful she hadn’t. For while she healed, the cannibal’s frantic squirming had begun to lessen also.

  Sally mustered her will and strength and flipped on her stomach, hoping beyond hope the sand in the wound wouldn’t hamper the healing. She attempted to claw and drag herself by the arm alone to the enemy, yet the lose sand left her without a solid grip to pull from. So, through the pain, she pushed herself with both legs feet and leveraged her arm to begin an agonizingly slow craw.

  The cannibal was but a yard or two away, yet the crawl took precious seconds that felt like minutes. But eventually, inevitably, she arrived at the figure.

  The man had all but stopped his turning and twisting, and now lay spasming. But even those were quickly subsiding, and the cannibal was starting his attempts to stand.

  Sally grabbed the man-eater’s leg. Reflexively, the man tried to kick her and shake it lose, but her grip was iron.

  With a strength she hadn’t known she could muster, Sally dragged the leg toward her, using its weight to try and lift herself up. The cannibal, regaining his animalistic panic, tried to claw at the sand to stop it, but without something to hold on to he merely threw sand around.

  With her rapid healing, her strength grew in leaps and bounds. She tried to stand up in order to drag and throw the man down the hill and towards the river, but an unlucky kick caught her in her still-regenerating stomach. The added pain didn’t matter – what is a drop to the suppressed ocean – but she was thrown back by it.

  Losing her balance, she began to fall down the dune and toward the river. But not without dragging the man-eater down with her.

  Together, they rolled in the sand, stopping just shy of the Redwater itself. With her ever-growing strength, Sally launched herself towards the cannibal.

  An uncoordinated scramble of arms and legs ensued, her trying to regain some sort of grip on him and try and drag him in the river, and him desperately trying to escape. Weak kicks and punches were thrown out by both sides, efforts to gain some sort of advantage over the other appearing and disappearing just as quickly.

  Eventually, during one tumble or another, Sally found herself on her knees while the cannibal lay on his stomach. She grabbed the collar of his Grandie suit and threw them both toward the river.

  Sally landed on her back in the water, seated on the riverbed while the cannibal was face down in the water, arms and legs spread out.

  The caustic reaction from the river began immediately and mounted quicker than before, but Sally didn’t try to leave. Instead, she put her everything into pushing the cannibal’s head underwater.

  She put his head in a headlock underneath her armpit. He struggled fiercely, trying to fight himself free from the deadlock, but it was of no use. He tried punching, but the pain stopped mattering long ago. Clawing and grabbing didn’t work either, the slipperiness of the water and her blood leaving him without a grasp, and his legs couldn’t reach her.

  Attempts to push himself up and out of the water likewise failed. While her weight alone was not enough to keep him under, her strength was still greater than his for now, and their positioning favored her. With a couple of well-aimed kicks, the cannibal was helpless as he slowly began to drown.

  Seconds passed into a full minute, then passed into two and three. But rather than growing weaker as air vacated his longs, his struggles grew fiercer and fiercer. Likewise, the Redwater was burning fiercely, blisters forming around her skin and beginning to weep. Everything within Sally screamed for her to let go.

  But she refused. If she did, Lucy would die. She wouldn’t- couldn’t let it happen again. Even if it means a final death.

  Then, all of a sudden, the cannibal went completely still, muscles locked.

  Had she done it? Had he finally drowned? Or was he pretending? The muscles were locked, not relaxed as they should be if he had died. Even now, she refused to let go, despite the animal part of her mind demanding she get out of the water.

  But she wouldn’t. Not until she was absolutely sure he was well and truly dead.

  “Sally!” She heard a hoarse cry coming from the dune. Looking up, Sally saw Lucy had stood up despite her wrecked knee. In her hand was her shotgun.

  Lucy threw it at her and a thought, a memory flashed through her mind: The spell! Sally remembered.

  Making the split-second decision, Sally let go of the cannibal and left the river. She fumbled the catch but quickly grabbed the gun out of the sand with quacking muscles. Immediately, she put the gun in its holster on her chest and cracked it upon, putting two slugs in its chambers with shaky hands.

  Then, she turned toward the enemy.

  The man-eater remained frozen in the water, caught in Lucy’s modified meditation spell. But bubbles were still coming from his mouth, less panicky than before. His form twitched every so often, increasingly so with every moment. The spell still held, but for how long?

  Without hesitation, she stepped once more into the water and put the slug-loaded shotgun as close to his head as possible.

  She pulled the trigger.

  Despite the water’s resistance and the cannibal’s no-doubt thick skull, the slug passed through clearly, blasting the top half of his head open. The crack in his skull allowed the caustic water to pour in and eat away at the sensitive brain underneath.

  The cannibal had stopped struggling.

  For good measure, she aimed at the base of the man’s and fired the other slug. Another large hole was opened, severing the spine from the head and only barely keeping it attached to his body.

  The spell broke and the body floated down the river.