Bad As They Seem

Bad As They Seem is an undated manuscript from the author Hayden Collins. Pages of the manuscript are broken up across the weapon masteries found within the Liber De Armamentariis. Each section title corresponds to the necessary weapon and mastery tier required to unlock the entry.

The characters, in order of appearance, are listed below:

- Josie McGowan (Jos)

- Fina McGowan (Fin)

- William Durant (Black Coat)

- Lynch

- William Salter

- Allison Davis

- Philip Huff Jones (Huffington)

- Elwood Finch

A downloadable PDF version of the manuscript can be obtained here.

Combat Axe (1/2)
-1-

The Mother left them before they were born. Internal bleeding. External bleeding. The father left them shortly afterwards. It wasn't the labor that killed her.

She hadn't known there would be two, so there had only been one name. Josefina. They pulled the infants apart, severed the cords, and severed the name: one Josie, one Fina. They went into the care of an uncle, a blacksmith. He had no children, and a wife buried with the yellow fever, so he apprenticed the girls, now women, in the smithy.

They learned to hammer, to forge, and to fight. The first knife Fina made broke against Josie's first axe. Everything they built they tested against the other in the yard of the smith. Their first attempts splintered and broke, but they grew stronger, in the fire and the fight. Their uncle watched them with pride and trepidation. Fire and fury. Fina and Josie. Fin and Jos

Two days past their sixteenth birthday a man named William Durant killed the blacksmith, and they reached for their tools.

Combat Axe (2/2)
-2-

He was no longer their uncle, but had taken on the role of their father, and as the killing blow landed against his skull (soft against the weight of the combat axe sent to it), his two girls, yes, his daughters, were entering the room, blackened by the soot from the forge and thinking only of dinner and rest.

You might think that this was the moment of transformation, the fabled turning point. And it was the first step taken on the path that would lead them to the hunters. But their fate was laid out before them. They had been born into violence, baptized by it, and come of age as midwives to its tools.

The twin girls backed silently out of the door at the gruesome sight, and returned to the forge, each choosing a weapon from those they had made and hung on the walls to display to customers. For Jos, a sledgehammer. For Fin, a crossbow and a single arrow whose fletching, shaft, and point she has fashioned with her own calloused hands.

Back in their kitchen, where the corpse of their uncle-father lay in a pool of blood on the floor, the stranger stood still, panting as he leaned against the handle of the axe he had taken from their own shed on his way inside. They were silent as cats, circling. They had but one question:

"What is your name?"

The man blinked and answered in a rough, wooden voice. "William Durant."

Jos swung her sledge hammer as Fin fired her bow into the skull of William Durant, whose blood joined that of his victim's, warming the cold stone floor.

Crossbow
-3-

It took all night to clean the blood from the floor. The twins burned the bodies in the fire of the forge, and in its heat they fashioned two identical knives that they would carry with them for the rest of their lives. When the first customer arrived, they did not hesitate to speak of the murder. In the face of a visit from a local lawman, Durant was handed the blame, and they were left alone.

They remembered their uncle-father over a single shot of whiskey every night until the bottle was empty, and they called an end to their mourning. Fin became obsessive in her dedication to fashioning crossbow bolts. They barely spoke.

One morning, two strangers entered the shop: One a woman, one a man, both outfitted in the rugged style of gunslingers, both showing the wear and dirt of long travels. The story of the blacksmith and Durant had reached them on the other side of the country.

"You killed Durant." The woman offered no other greeting.

"That was what he said he was called." The woman, a stranger, could not tell yet the twins apart and did not know who spoke, though she had already been told their names.

The woman nodded toward the weapons displayed on the walls. "You made these?" Identical nods answered her. "You know how to use them?"

Jos picked up her crossbow, strung it, and shot the man, who had hung back in the doorway, silent and grim. He groaned and fell on to his knees, then to one side. The woman, who had not flinched, not even looked down as the man beside her fell, smiled.

"I would like to place an order with the smith."

Crossbow Explosive
-4-

Over dinner they- the twins and the traveler, who was called lynch- talked of a dark future and a darker past. A rift had been torn in the world, and through the rift, a monster had come. It was an entity both one and many. It could possess humans in a way, shaping them to its will, yet the spread of its power mimicked human disease. Most assumed it was an epidemic.

"I would destroy this thing." Lynch was twice their age and looked older, her skin worn and weathered, leathered, her face crowned with a wide brimmed hat covering a thick white- blonde braid. "And you, who both kill without hesitation or remorse, would be valuable allies against it. You need not leave the forge, but I would offer training. In the hunt. But before you answer, a question: Did you know Durant?" Both girls shook their heads no.

"Well he knew you. Or of you, as having been gone for those 16 years." She paused to take a breath. "William Durant was your father." Silence followed Lynch's words. The blacksmith had been father enough. Even if it were true, they had no need for another.

She continued. "He killed your mother. Perhaps he returned to finish the job. Perhaps he was sent here, unknowing. I suspect, if you join me, we are going to find out. Now, would you join me in the hunt?"

They did not need to consider their answer. They would.

Winfield M1873 (2/2)
-5-

They closed the hop for one week and went into the swamps to train with the woman who called herself Lynch. Jos, who preferred the sledgehammer to a ranged weapon, who preferred, who preferred the wet mash of flesh and the crunch of reverberating up her arm after a direct hit to the distance ease of long range firearms, learned to shoot, and a Winfield became her constant companion. Fin, who could Robin Hood any target with a crossbow, practiced with knives, a pistol, and a machete. But the knives were her favorite. Such an intimate way to incapacitate flesh.

it took several days to learn to shoot, but Jos was focused, obsessively so; the twins both were. They took quickly to each weapon Lynch was able to provide, though she had but one trunk: a portable arsenal and their first box of toys.

A pack of rabid dogs were their first real opponents, and the twins slaughtered them with ease, working back to back: methodical, brutal, graceful. Lynch watched from a nearby perch, ready to take the dogs with her own rifle should the twins prove incompitent, but she found no reason to fire.

Learning to track was more difficult, and the local black bears provided the practice they needed. As they learned to read the signs, Lynch described the beings they could expect to face. The gruesome butcher with the head of a pig, skewered with hooks and bits of metal. A giant spider that lurked in dark, enclosed spaces, skittering and fast, clicking and keening and hungry. A tall, spindly killer, deceptive and quick. The would, she explained, receive a large bounty if they were successful in killing creatures like these.

"Then I guess we're going to be rich," Fin said, the rare light of a smile illuminating her lips.

Winfield M1873C (1/2)
-6-

They bathed in gold; they bathed in blood. By day they worked on horseshoes, pots, and pans, and once the smith was closed, they chose their weapons and headed out into the swamps. They were silent, and ruthless: a perfect team of two, able to communicate without speaking, and they killed almost as many hunters as they did creatures, clearing the field of every kind of evil.

Lynch opened up a world of connections. Superintendents, government men, captains - men who the day before would not have given them the time of day. Now, they were eager to meet the infamous twins. Dispatch them. Pay them, on their return, handsomely. This society of hunters, it seemed, was more a loose band of greedy ruffians than the tightly knit society that Lynch had described, "led" by the self important and the power-hungry. The twins' reputation spread, and as it did their own heads became a much-sought bounty. They each slept with a Winfield beside their bed, now.

It was a Sunday when they found the woman's body, nailed to a tree beside a dilapidated cabin, rotting, and missing the right leg.

Fin nodded towards it, the nod an acknowledgment and a question. Monster or Human? the nod asked.

Jos shrugged. The answer was monster either way. The woman's corpse - pile of rotting flesh, marshy vessel for flies and maggots - had obviously been tortured, used for target practice, and my God, had she still been alive when she had been nailed to the tree. Fin shook her head and pointed toward the door, which hung open. Inside they found a man - dirty and covered in weeping red boils - asleep on a cot. They both raised their rifles and waited. They would learn his victim's name before he died. But as Fin leaned down to shake him awake, a meathead broke through the front door, spraying leeches in every direction from the open sore of its neck.

Winfield M1873C (2/2)
-7-

Salter awoke to a floor awash with leeches, a Meathead stumbling against the wall then the small table, knocking papers and pistols to the floor. He awoke to two strangers, two girls, standing beside the fireplace, guns raised, weapons strapped to every possible point across their bodies. One signaled to the other, who took something out of a pouch tied to her belt and threw it through the paper tacked to the window. Outside a cacophonous racket began and the creature began to throw itself against the far wall with renewed force.

One slung her rifle onto her back, and took up a sledgehammer that she wielded with a strength unseemly for a woman, let alone a girl. Who were these intruders?

She swung the hammer through the air and into the spine - assuming it had one - of the creature. The sound it made, that wet thud - a noise that every being of flesh and bone must loathe to hear - echoed in his ears, though he was glad to see the thing floundering on the floor where it heaved and writhed. The girl struck down a second time with the added force of gravity, crushing its leg, but she had not accounted for the leeches, which had, in the meantime, found their way to her feet. She gasped and screamed as their sickening tendrilled suckers found purchase on her flesh, and they began to feed.

Lebel 1886 (1/2)
-8-

Jos lay sprawled on the floor of the small cabin, and the deflated leeches she had cut from her body littered the floor around her. She wrapped her fingers around the handle of her sledgehammer, a sweet comfort. She could not move her legs, and she did not know when the numbing effect of the leeches' saliva would subside.

Fin stood beside her, her back to the mountain of flesh on the floor, dead and motionless at last. (Had it ever truly been alive?) She faced the small man who huddled on the small cot near the dead fire and began to reload her gun. The man shuddered, muttering quietly as his eyes darted between the two women. He was covered in sores and caked in dirt, obviously terrified and desperate, but there was an intelligence in his eyes that moved beyond the fear.

Outside, the crickets chirped incessantly, punctuated by mammalian moan, an owl's deep-voiced call, or the low gulping of a toad. Night had fallen upon them harshly, and as suddenly, as the Meathead.

Fin finished reloading and stood staring at the man as he continued to mutter. "Never at night, never at night, they've, cabin, neve, my notes notes notes, night notes." His words fell into staccato bursts. His cheeks were caked with puss and blood, washed crean only where tears streamed down his face.

"Who is the woman on the tree?" Fin asked.

His body went rigid and then his face fell into his hands in a moaning slurry of words: "Oh Mary Mary Mary, oh Mary Mary Mary Mary Mary. I. I. I"

Fin looked to her sister, catching her eye for the length of one nod, looked back up at the man, and shot him in the head.

Lebel 1886 (2/2)
-9-

Twins. Doubles. DEUX. QUPA. The oath of two was all the more powerful when they spoke it, doubling as it reflected between them. Two mirrors facing each other, infinite, and expanding with each utterance. They found comfort in the repetition of the words. In the name of two, bound by blood. Let us drink from the fountain of death. Here's to the hunter. Here's to the hunted. For we are the blood and we are the body. We are the bullet and we are the knife. Let us drink from the fountain of death. Our thirst shall never be quenched.

It was as on any other day, though as this day, they had slaughtered a monster, had peeled fist-sized leeches from rending skin, and had killed a man for torturing an innocent woman. Since their initiation, many other days had been just like it. Mirrors in time.

The violence of their lives - begun in death and blood, and riding along that slick surface still - was the violence of their days was the very fabric of the world. People said the West had been won, but Jos and Fin knew there were still wilds, had seen and destroyed what roamed the deadlands, had cut the blackened hearts from the chests of callous and evil men. As they walked out of the swamp they spoke idly of dinner. As on any other day.

Lynch watched them, biding her time, looking to the cards for patience. They were almost ready now.

Bomb Lance (1/2)
-10-

In the fire of the forge, the flames twisted into snakes, and the hissing of damp wood was transformed into the mad tongue of serpents.

Fin stood paralyzed, entranced. Behind her, her sister Jos, her mirror image, stood with the striking hammer, waiting for her sister to return the blade of the harpoon they had been asked to repair to the anvil. But fin did not move. The snakes, the flames, the whispering hisses... sounds droned in her skill, the images filling up her entire field of vision.

"Fin." Jos spoke impatiently. Letting the metal cool now could weaken its substance. Yet her sister did not move. "Fin!"

Fin swung around abruptly, the cooling blade falling to the floor beside her, and faced her sister with eyes gone blank, all white and no pupil. Do not award your allegiance so easily. You do not know her, and you do not belong to her. You belong to each other. Your allegiance is yours to give or take. Your second initiation begins today, and ends when you find me again. A barking laugh forced itself from her throat, and she began to choke, falling to the floor as her body struggled for oxygen.

Jos kneeled beside Fin's gasping form and looked up toward the fire to see an enormous canebrake snake uncurl itself from the flames and slide toward them. It was a living snake; it was more shadow than substance. Jos reached for her rifle, never far from her hands now, and shot at the canebrake, but the bullets passed through it as if through a mist. Yet when it sunk its fangs into her thigh, they injected real poison into her blood, enough to kill within the hour. The hour of the snake.

Bomb Lance (2/2)
-11-

A snake could just as well be ally as assassin. Could just as well be mother as killer. Ogun, for example, was a god of metal work and warriors, and the twins, blacksmiths and hunters, were fitting patrons. But chaos and chance were more powerful gods than he, masters of all.

When the flames had turned to snakes before Fin's eyes, her head filled with a terrible orchestra of hisses and snarls. She did not know who or what has spoken through her that night, nor whether she had been targeted by purpose of chance.

Lynch found Fin and Jos sprawled on the stone floor of the smith, both delirios. Jos' leg had swollen and smelled of rot at the site of the snake bite. Fin lay motionless and cold to the touch, and the bomb lance, repairs half finished, lay beside them on the floor. Lynch recognized the bite on Jos' leg and focused her attention on suctioning poison from the bite. The fire was long out, and she could not cauterize the wound. In her own visions she had seen signs that the twins were important to her cause, though the details were obscured. Should the twins be ill-prepared or killed, the cards had told her, their effect would be inverted. They must survive.

Pulling out a deck of cards wrapped in dark silk, Lynch began to mark the floor with chalk. A ritual might revive them, or at the very least contain their spirits and keep them from crossing over. They would be use of her yet, but for that, they must live.

Nitro Express Rifle (1/2)
-12-

The visions continued. Fin did not sleep, but tossed and turned as one caught in a nightmare. She fell into a restless sleep, lying unconscious for hours, then days. He vision writhed with snakes, echoed and hissing. Inside of the vision, the world shook and shimmered around the edges...

''Mud, blood, fog and shadow and movement and explosions. Gun shots, and screams. Run through the darkness, hope you don't trip, hope their bullets don't pierce your skin, hope you make it out alive in spite of your waning strength. The odds are not in your favor. The odds have never been in your favor. It's why you play the game.''

''You press your back against the thin boards of shed, not knowing if it harbors your own angel of death. Not knowing if some hidden gunman prepared to write your finale, and send it express. You hasten to reload your rifle, wary of the sound of metal on metal as you slide a cartridge into the chamber. Then you take a small syringe out of your coat pocket, raising a sleeve, and sending the point into your arm with a sharp thrust. The solution takes effect quickly, and you feel invincible, euphoric, giddy, prepared. You raise your gun and you run. And you run. And you run.''

''The noise of gunshots surrounds you as you are seen and targeted, but you are quick, zigzagging like a jackrabbit, laughing. You feel like you could run forever, could shoot a nickel from a weathervane in a storm. You kill five men and one woman on your way to a building that will afford you cover, reloading as you run. Your head will haze over into an intensely painful fog when the injection wears off, but for now, you are fueled by its fire.''

When Fin came to it was dark, and Jos had gone. Jos' absence was disorientating; her sister was her anchor, an assurance to her existence. She knew but one way to focus her mind. With a sledgehammer and a rifle, she left the cabin, extinguishing the lantern Jos had left burning as she shut the door. There would be monsters in the swamps tonight, and she would find them.

Nitro Express (2/2)
-13-

The snake's venom had affected each twin differently, it could not be doubled. Their battle magic, as they thought of it, had weakened. The mirror had cracked.

That evening, Jos' mind was on death: her own, her mother's, her father's, her victims. She found no meaning in the loss of life, was unburdened by its gravity. Death was inevitable, and its inevitability rendered it meaningless. The word fate rang hollow in her ears.

The priests offered no solace though they had begun to hear rumors of a Christian association of hunters and they did not trust those who offered sanctioned redemption. Some called the creatures a plague; some called them the devil. Both were wrong.

Pulling on a long jacket against the cool air foreshadowing fall, armed only with a small pistol, Jos left her sister behind to meet another

Allison, the woman she would now meet had sought Jos out, and they had progressed from cautious silence to confessional outpourings, from wary strangers to friends, and then further. Camaraderie existed among hunters, but connection was taboo. Like children left unnamed until they survived their second birthday, hunters preferred not to name. Which is to say, preferred not to know that which they were likely to lose. To hunt, you must be able to survive both combat and constant loss.

To remove the calloused skin that protects the delicate shell of the heart was to choose life. A hunter always chooses death. Does not think of the future. In the cracks of the mirror, their images bent and multiplied: reflections, no two the same.

Cavalry Sabre (1/2)
-14-

The lantern signal came, as it must, in the night, for only the darkness can carry the light. Jos had come to trust another hunter - unprecedented, dangerous, but perhaps, now, necessary - as Fin had become other, her trances a wall between them.

Jos and Allison met in an abandoned building just inside of the dead zone, where they shared the burden of memory in that dimly lit confessional. Where the leg had been maimed, and everything beneath the knee removed, the scar was rocky and deep, a canyon of dead flesh. Surrounding it like constellations were the pock marks of shrapnel’s fury. Allison had not expected to keep the leg, in fact, had lost most of it. But a strange extrusion had begun to regrow shortly after the hasty operation, and it had healed under the careful watch of her traveling companion. She could walk on it now.

Another scar ran from knee to groin, where a saber’s blow had nearly halved the leg at the hip. She still limped, though the injuries no longer slowed her pace. A large red birch mark stamped the leg as well; mark of the devil her mother had called it, had called her. Many would’ve put a child down the well for less, but they needed her on the farm.

Now the calloused hand of the young blacksmith followed the line of the canyon to its source, and the scar bearer wept, for the first time, to think of the leg, the one lost and the one gained, wept to know life with the intensity of one who constantly walked with the reaper. Such a lonely companion he was. Not like this. Nothing like this.

Lebel 1886 Marksman
-15-

Huffington was a nefarious man, quick to throw morals to the wind for his own advancement, drunk on power and scornful of consequence. Yet his power was bound up in earthly matters - politics and prestige - unlike the woman who stood before him, whose steely gaze and white-blonde hair betrayed an otherworldly quality

“How dare you consort with Laveau?” Her words were a hiss “She is one of mine.”

“That,” Huffington replied, "is none of your concern.”

She greeted his answer with a cold stare, then sat down in the chair that faced his desk and laughed.

"Bold.” From her pocket she pulled a worn deck of cards, wrapped in silk “But stupid. Draw a card please.”

She fanned the deck out before him, waiting.

“I don't abide parlor tricks.”

“Neither do I. Pick a card, Huffington, and hope it's not the last thing you ever do.”

He drew. She looked at the card in his hand. "Well, well, well. The Two of Arrows. How convenient”

He shrugged "Get on with it Lynch.”

“There are two young women I'd like you to meet.” She tucked the cards back into her pocket and smiled

Hand Crossbow (1/2)
-16-

Not every monster must be slain. There had been a time when the twins’ lives had contained neither monster nor murder. But perhaps some monsters could become allies. Could become weapons.

Fin had been gone for three days. Her hallucinations took her suddenly and completely, and this time she was on the hunt when consciousness left her. She awoke covered in mud and mosquito bites, hungry, and grateful that the gators had disappeared from the swamps. Jos had not noticed her absence, but Lynch had been nervous, and looked relieved when she returned.

During Fin’s first vision, the snake had spoken of initiation. The visions of the past days left her certain now: She could not trust Lynch, and she would have to summon the snake of her own volition to complete the ritual it had begun. Fin spoke to no one of her plans, uncertain who she could trust.

Fairy tales had long warned her of the treachery of snakes, but for now she choose to trust. Murder was always an option later.

Seven snakes must be caught, entranced, and then released: messengers to call the snake of her vision back to her side. This was no rudimentary summoning. This involved the boundaries of the Land of the Dead. A length of iron, a dog, and a palm frond, laid on the shore, would also be required.

The Seven would carry her message. But because she was wary, she also purchased a syringe, wrapped in brown paper. When she removed the paper from the metal curves of its length, a greenish glow shone through the glass: the antibody, the antidote, the cure that, she hoped, would see her through if superstition failed her.

Hand Crossbow (2/2)
-17-

The shore writhed with their long bodies in smooth wave-like crests, and the mass continued out into the water of the Bayou. Many had come, though not the one Fin had called. Not yet.

Hundreds of fangs had already sunk their hollow points into her flesh. Thousands more surrounded her now, waiting for the chance. Her body ached. She had spoken seven words over each of the seven snakes she had released, and they had called their brethren.

She forced the syringe’s point through the skin of her left arm, forcing the plunger down just as she began to lose consciousness. But as her eyelids began to fall shut, she caught sight of a silhouette.

It approached through thee water, enormous. She forced her eyes open and faced it. Would it be adversary or diplomat?

The snake was a combination of the most venomous locals: the keeled scales of the Canebrake, and the black crossbands ringing a beige body. The elliptical pupils of the Cottonmouth. The broad head of the Copperhead. The rattle of the Diamondback and the hydrophilia of the Coral snake. It was the biggest snake she had ever seen, tall as a house with a body thick and solid as a dozen trees lashed together.

More venom than blood now pulsed in her veins. She began to convulse, struggling to remain standing so as to face the approaching beast. She need not have bothered. As it sped forward, the snake opened its mouth and enveloped her in one smooth motion, continuing on into the night., Its brethren soon had abandoned the shallow waters as well, no longer compelled to remain by the summoning ritual. The bayou fell silent, a single cricked the only singer who dared break the silence.

Hand Crossbow Poison
-18-

Fin’s body was found on a muddy bank by passing hunters. It had been seven days. Devil knows why they even bothered to carry her back to town, where they delivered her silently to a local doctor. They might have mistaken her for a corpse.

She was alive, but badly disfigured - bones broken or crushed, skin scalded by digestive acid - and thickly coated with mucus. The doctor assumed that she would not survive, but allowed her to occupy the single bed in his practice while he attempted to locate her kin. But she healed quickly, and the doctor, who was a devout Christian and could not attribute what he saw to an act of God, gave up the case, and threw her out without ever learning her name.

The flesh wounds did not scab, but scaled. Where the skin on the right half of her skull had been peeled away, her head was now covered with fig-sized green scales, as were her forearms and large swaths of her legs. She did not speak, and her movements had become more fluid. To look into her eyes - with pupils now shrunken to oblong slits - was to confront a being both cold and alien. She was no longer twinned.

She walked from the doctor’s office to her own house, where she found Jos and Allison sat beside the fire. Her first words were spoken in a dry but certain hiss, as they had been spoken to her as she traveled with the snake:

Lynch cannot be trusted.

LeMat Mark II (1/2)
-19-

“What do you care about the fate of these twins?”

“I have sent enough people to their grave this week.”

“And you’ll send two more.” Lynch paused to examine a copper paperweight on Huffington’s desk. “But they will return. You will call them in the name of the AHA, and you will send them to the Butcher’s House, to his Cold House.”

Huffington raised an eyebrow. That place was the stuff of myth, not maps. But he said nothing. Lynch continued.

“You will explain to them that your medical experiments have led you to the conclusion that you have been informed as to the location of a weapon that might end this. And you will send them to The Butcher’s House. I will advise them on the rest.”

Huffington nodded briskly, clearly opposed, yet clearly bound to fulfill her request.

“And you will do it now. They’re waiting outside.”

For the first time, Huffington looked surprised. Lynch knocked on the door twice before opening it to two young women - surely not yet 20! - dressed as men for the field and heavily armed. One wore her hair tied back with a string, the other’s scalp was - in part - crowned by a sheath of what looked like scales. Huffington wondered at the sight as they introduced themselves, forcing his face into a grimacing smile as he repeated the words he’d been fed.

LeMat Mark II (2/2)
-20-

Lynch sent the twins on to the smithy to prepare their weapons, staying to observe Huffington’s examination of a new recruit. A nurse led the patient into her office. She was a woman of 25, clearly marked by the pox, and brought to the asylum by her own mother.

“Name.” Huffington’s tone was brisk and unfriendly.

“Nellie Crown.”

What ails you Miss Crown?”

“Nothing ails me but my ill-tempered mother! I’ve my very own Angel, Doctor, I couldn’t be better.”

“Tell me about the Angel Nellie,” Huffington said as he took her pulse. “What does it look like?”

“Don’t see it, feel. Angel’s right there, Doctor Sir. Right there,” she pointed to her rib cage. “And here,” she said, pointing to her lower abdomen, lowering her voice to a whisper, “Here is where the snake lives. He’s quiet now, all quiet. Shhh shh shh. Let’s not wake him doctor.”

Huffington opened his mouth to speak, but Lynch interrupted him. “Nellie do the Angel and the Snake speak to you?”

“Not like you and I speak, no. Get the feeling thoughts come into my head, just from nothing, get the feeling those thoughts come from here.” She looked back to the places she had pointed.

“Nellie,” Lynch said, her voice sweet and rotten, her eyes on Nellie’s, unwavering. “Would you mind telling me what the Angel tells you now?” And as the ended the sentence she drew a jagged blade and ran it across Huffington’s throat. The cry that had started in his throat turned into a wet choking sound as he grasped at the wound, hands red with blood.

“Oh it’s very pleased ma’am, very pleased,” Nellie replied, cheerful as a daisy. “The Snake doesn’t like it much, but I’ve learned not to listen to the treacherous thing. Are you a doctor, ma’am?”

“As for the first, I’m glad to hear it. As for the second, no.” Lynch cleaned her blade on Huffignton’s jacket, stepping across his convulsing body. “Now, if you would care to join me, I’d like to discuss your future employment.” And as Huffington took his final breath, Lynch led Nellie from the room.

Lebel 1886 Talon
-21-

The twins traveled a day and a night before they reached the cave Minimally armed and draped in matching suits of decadent red cloth their differences were muted. Lynch provided Jos and Fin the clothing, instructions, a map, and two small stones, and sent them off in a carriage. Their suits had been tailored some weeks before and had lain ready in Lynch's trunk. She had remained behind. “The cards afford me a certain clairvoyance.” had been her answer to the question the twins had not dared ask. “But how did you know? How did you know?” Huffington's orders had been as cold and calculating as the man himself. The twins had grown accustomed to doing Lynch's bidding, and at her nod of approval, had immediately agreed to take his commission. They would bring Huffington the weapon, and he would provide weapons and information. The carriage driver left them an hour's walk from the mouth of the cave, and left them there. When they returned, should they return, they would find their own way back. Before the gaping grey maul of the cave, Jos turned to Fin, and their eyes met still identical, still a mirror, even after all that had changed. Somewhere inside, they would find the Butcher's House. “To a life well lived and a death well deserved," said Fin, in a quiet voice, as each placed a small, cold stone on their tongue. They turned, and entered the cave, the mournfully high cry of the wind their only farewell.

Winfield M1873 Aperture
-22-

Into the cave they went, the space narrowing, and then narrowing again until they were forced to crawl.

As they rounded a corner - Fin in the lead - they came to a stretch of tunnel hung with the bodies of dozens of gigantic rattlesnakes, strung up like lanterns, writhing and alive. Fin, perhaps half snake now herself, led them on, the cool scaly lengths of reptilian body running the length of their backs as they crawled passed. Not one bit was given. Perhaps the snake’s message had traveled farther then they thought. Or, perhaps, the lantern snakes were not to keep people out, but to keep them in.

It had been hours, but still they crawled, snug as corks in a bottle, barely able to breath. They crawled in silence, tongues worrying at the icy stones that bought them passage, their clothing gone from red to brown with dirt and filth.

Finally, the tunnel opened out into a large room, ceilings high and spanned with bright banners above a table set for seven. At each place, a figure sat, still as statues.

The twins walked from figure to figure, stones still cold in their mouths. At the side of the smallest figure, the stones glowed red hot. Jos removed the ember stone, and placed it in the hand of the small figure. Nothing. Then, a flicker of the eyes and an impish smile.

And the Lord of the Dead could not bar their way, for they had not paid tribute to false idols, but to Him directly. He must answer, and he must let them pass, hough they did not know if it would be enough to stop him from preventing their departure.

Winfield M1873 Swift
-23-

Long you’ve heard of their prowess in the hunt, and so you can, perhaps, imagine how easily they fought their way through caves, across the field of knives and past the razor wolves - dogs were, after all, their very first trial - and the weapon Huffington had described, thus securing their rite of return passage from the Lord of the Dead, for it gave them the power to take his life for good. Fin and Jos returned to Lynch, and they did not return empty handed.

When they handed the strange weapon over to Lynch, the skin on her hands was left wreathed in frost. But as they were dressed in fire red, dressed in blood, the twins had not been bothered by the wretched blade’s icy burn.

As Lynch wrapped it in red silk, Jos offered to deliver it to Huffington. “No need, no need,” her voice was quiet, reverent, a near whisper. “Huffington is dead.” With that she called for her attendant, a girl they had never seen before, who carefully carried it from the room.

“By whose hand?” Fin asked, wary.

“By mine”

The twins remained silent. What they thought of this revelation was a secret that they would carry to their graves, sooner or later.

“How did he offend you?” Jos asked.

“He was arrogant, and growing bolder. He needed to be put in his place. His place being a shallow grave.” Lynch looked to the twins. “But there are more important things to think about now. What you brought back is extremely important. But there is more.”

The only sound Fin made was a metallic hiss, as she sharpened her blade.

“There is a second weapon. Now that I know you can gain entry to the Butcher’s house, I would ask you return for something else.”

The twins looked wary,the words from that fateful vision echoing in their ears: Lynch is not to be trusted. But they would go. They would go, and this time, they would not hand off their prize.

Winfield M1873 Talon
-24-

No one living remembers their own birth. Trauma re-shapes memory, leaving in its place a sardonic likeness. But the Dead remember.

Careening towards birth and - for a time - away from death and away from fear, the Dead are formidable foes. The time spent in the Land of the Dead is a time of regeneration, of rest. The dead build their halls of their bones, and dine on their own flesh.

Beyond the first Hall of Bones is the Hall of Fire, and in it pools of tar burn eternal, filling the air with a thick oily smoke among which the dead walk. The twins, who had won the favor of the Lord of the Dead, walked freely among them now, though none acknowledged their presence. He had challenged them to a knife throwing contest. The fool. Knives had been one of their first playthings.

After that, it was easy to obtain what they had come for. In 14 years, he would come to return it to its resting place. Until then, the scorched and strangely etched bladed fire arm was theirs, a loyal servant to their cause.

Sparks Silenced
-25-

Voices spoke to each of them. Through the snakes. Through the cards. And through metal. Fin. Jos. Lynch. Three Hunters, three voices, and an uncountable trail of corpses behind them, leading up to this moment.

They stood in a circle, as was custom for such things, three points of a sacred triangle. They had stood in this sacred formation before, in friendship. Now they stood poised for attack.

Lynch knelt slowly, hands grubbing into the damp bayou soil, blackened fingernails breaking as they met stone, then metal, then flesh. She kept her eyes on the twins as her hands slowly, painful, became the large claws of a bird. The claws scraped deeper, searching, diggin. They met purchase, then, and pulled from the Earth a man, held in her clutches like a doll, and seemingly dead.

She held the small man in her craven claws, muttering, and he opened his eyes and screamed in pain as his body slowly began to change. As his haddns transformed into talons, Lynch regained her own hands. Feathers sprouted violently from his neck, as a beak forced its way through the skin of his lips, the only evidence that he had once been a man the blood smeared across them.

The bird screamed and flung itself into the air, letting gravity return it to its prey, claws outstretched and reaching for Jos’ throat.

But as the bird descended, the ground between the twins began to shake and rupture as from its depths the thick muscled length of a giant snaked flung itself into the air, intercepting the bird’s murderous grasp. The two beasts crashed to the ground ,snake wrapped around the bird’s body, talons wrapped around the body of the snake.

Their strength was matched; however, inside the snake’s gruesome bite waited a poison that would tip the balance. As the snake sunk its fangs into the bird’s breast, it shrieked, shedding crimson feathers like tear drops, shrinking as it did, until it lay on the ground, a lifeless ragged little doll man once more.

Crossbow Shotbolt
-26-

The colossal snake formed a loose defensive coil around the twins, who faced Lynch, poised for attack. Lynch’s eyes brimmed with rage. The effigy could not be used again immediately, Nellie had disappeared with the first weapon the twins had brought back from the Land of the Dead, and the twins had found dangerous allies and weapons of their own. She would be unable to take on the Sculptor. She had few defenses left to take on even the human pair who stood before her.

Lynch’s face went dark, as if fallen into shadow, as her form blurred and shifted. “We should have been allies. We could have stopped this! We could have stopped this together.”

“Together?” Jos replied sardonically. “You mean that you would have mutilated us and sacrificed our lives, to satisfy your own grudge.” In the end, it had been the Lord of the Dead who had revealed Lynch’s secret. Lynch was not the only one with a grudge, not the only creature who could slip between worlds, and throughout her many, many years, she had accumulated more enemies than allies.

Lynch’s arm was changing. Sharp carapace ripped through the leather of her coat, revealing a grey spiked limb, double jointed and bent at strange angles.

“Time for you to go home, Lynch.”

“I am not your enemy!” The protest was a ragged, desperate snarl. The snake unfurled itself, positioned to deliver a killing blow. The twins began, slowly, the move forwards, one clutching a strange-looking gun, the other a crossbow.

Lynch’s eyes flicked quickly around her, prey, hyper aware of the presence of the predator. She could not abandon her body as long as she was in this world. In that other place, she could wield so much power, yet here, she was bound and gagged by her own flesh. She unfocused her eyes, searching the Darkness for the closest rift. And when she ran, the twins did not follow. Only later, in order to find the rift Lynch had fled through and close it for good.

The work done, Fin turned to Jos. “No one left to lead the organization now, is there?”

“Not a soul,” Jos replied.

“Then I guess it’s time we found Finch.” They exchanged a smile, shouldered their weapons, and headed toward town.