Wasteland Warlords Episode 3: Chapter 11 - High Noon in Haunt Topic

Clay looked at Griff. The old weed had one hand on the Employee’s Only door, awaiting the signal it was go-time. The others were right behind him, ready to fan out and rain down destruction on the lizardman dungeon lord from both sides, but Clay was the main course for the Voodoo Daddy tonight. Or rather, his Nega-Voodoo tattoos were.

One last time, Clay pulled the Ace of Spades and checked that the cylinder was full. Six rounds. In the heat of battle, he probably wouldn’t have time to reload a weapon this involved. It wasn’t a yank and replace like his M4’s magazine. He had to make all six shots count.

That meant utilizing a little misdirection. Combos, like Alex had always tried—mostly without success—to teach her karate students at the dojo. Don’t just throw a single kick; fire a punch or a different kick first to get yourself into a better position and to draw your opponent’s attention. Then they won’t see the kick coming a mile away.

Clay had never been much for sparring, but he knew good advice when he heard it.

In his off-hand, he gripped the Wand of Lesser Inferno. If anything could draw attention, it would be that.

Sucking in a fortifying breath, he jerked his head at Griff. The old weed ripped open the door.

Clay sprinted straight down the middle of the room toward the lizard on the gaudy wingback throne.

Was it his imagination or had Voodoo Daddy Saurian grown? From this angle, it looked like the lizardman was at least twice as big as he had been before. He had also exchanged his dented top hat for a fedora and lost the tiny vest in favor of black suspenders printed with bloodred vampire teeth. In the skinny jeans and tight A-frame, the lizard man radiated the same aura as the lead singer from an early, off-brand 2000s pop-punk band.

“Back for more?” The Voodoo Daddy grinned, his cold reptilian smile revealing a mouthful of fangs like ice picks. Yeah, those were definitely different. They’d looked more like needles the first time around. An ironic little mustache was stuck to his upper lip, which was another new addition.

Clay’s suspicions were confirmed when the lizardman rose from the throne—and kept rising. The creature stood at least twelve feet tall now, with double the amount of raw muscle he’d had before. He was a ripped emo Godzilla in black skinny jeans with a row of spikes down his spine like a stegosaurus, and huge obsidian blades protruding from the end of his tail.

Clay fired off an Inferno Lance.

Just like their first meeting, the lizardman whipped a scaly hand through the air, force-knocking the Lance aside.

But on the heels of the Inferno Lance, Clay had also surreptitiously fired his first shot from the Ace of Spades. The silver bullet flew straight as an arrow, completely unnoticed by the Voodoo Daddy until it was too late. Lizard blood sprayed through the air in an arc as the round slammed into the rippling meat of the lizardman’s shoulder.

The Voodoo Daddy stumbled back a step, grabbing at the wound in his shoulder. His hairless brows leapt skyward.

“Wyrd damage? You want to play with fate and magic, do you?” He chuckled. “Puny fool!” He thumped his chest with a fist and thundered, “I am the god of the Haunt Topic, no longer just a lowly Voodoo Shaman, but an evolved Spiritworld Bocor!”

“Phft, more like the evolved incarnation of My Chemical Bromance,” Joe taunted as he stomped into the room in his mech. “Is this your final form? Let me guess, the Emo Screamo King? Is your final move the Hipster Mustache Ride?”

“Your insults don’t work on me,” the Shaman hissed, “I’m as dead on the inside as you are about to be on the outside.”

The lizard man raised a clawed hand and the ambient spook-rave music hit a crescendo, drowning out Joe’s insults. An army of ghostly spirits flew out of the shirts and posters and incensors scattered around the throne room. There were anime-looking warriors with ridiculously oversized weapons, long-dead musicians with their instruments converted to instruments of death, and white-bearded wizards accompanied by loping packs of wolves.

Saurian’s summoned force converged on Clay.

Instead of hacking him apart, the ghostly characters crashed into a wall of Obscured Jaeger squad. Well mostly Obscured at any rate. While Clay and Joe had occupied the Shaman’s attention, Alex, Chonk, and Griff had all sneakily moved into position under the cover of the Camera Obscura. Bertha roared, Alex’s kusarigama snapped, Chonk chittered, and Griff’s shortsword and buckler rang out against the oversized anime weapons. The rest of the crew appeared in a flash as the effects of the Camera faded.

The Voodoo Daddy snarled, the curl of his scaly lip tilting his ironic mustache off-center.

“Should’ve expected such treachery! But it’s no matter. A Spiritworld Bocor is more than a match for a couple of grubby humans, Incant or no!” Saurian tore a clay pot from his pocket—though with the skin-tight level of those jeans, Clay didn’t know where he’d managed to hide it—and flicked the lid off with one sharp claw. Etchings on the side glowed with ghostly energy.

Before the lizardman could attack, Clay cast Control Lights and turned those glowing etchings into another flash-bomb.

Saurian growled in pain and threw a hand over his eyes. In spite of his temporary blindness, Voodoo Daddy lobbed the pot at where Clay had been.

Had been because Clay was busy running for the lizardman’s flank. The pot exploded harmlessly, acid eating a divot into the stone floor.

As Clay ran, he cast Beguiling Whisper and fired off a two-fer from the Wyrd West revolver.

“Over here, salmonella breath!” Clay yelled, using the spell to put the sound in Saurian’s opposite ear and simultaneously cover the reports from his pistol.

The lizardman spun the wrong way, and the dry shaking of a rattlesnake’s warning filled the throne room. That ghostly shield enveloped him like a giant spectral bubble.

The first Wyrd West bullet managed to slip past before the shield snapped closed, but the second exploded against the barrier in a flash of toxic green light.

Still blind, Saurian lobbed a second pot. This didn’t land harmlessly like the acid pot. Wrapped up in a fight to the death, Griff blundered into its howling hurricane winds. But he didn’t go alone. The old weed managed to pull a white-haired anime character in a skimpy schoolgirl outfit, wielding a massive scythe, into the pot’s area of effect with him. The gale force winds battered the combatants with driving slivers of hail. The icy projectiles pierced Griff’s armor and tore into the scythe chick, slicing open flesh and armor alike.

Joe swooped into the storm, rockets flaring, and snagged Griff. Left to face its wrath alone, the anime girl dropped her scythe and fell to her hands and knees, dramatically coughing up blood. Tear-jerking music swelled from nowhere, then in slow motion, she collapsed in a heap of bloody limbs. Multiple times. From different angles. “Nani?!” she squawked before finally hitting the stone floor and disappearing.

Clay shook his head. Anime tropes were too weird for this world.

Across the throne room, a clank rang out as Alex’s kusarigama flail knocked the helmet off a massive suit of armor. Clay realized with a surge of unreality that she was facing down one of the Total Metal Alchemist characters—the only one he’d never managed to find before his mom had sold off his collection.

“Scratch a line in the blood symbol on its neck,” he sent her with Beguiling Whisper. That had been the way you killed them on the show.

Ducking under a huge haymaker from the suit, Alex closed the distance and slipped under its arm. She climbed up its back like a tiny blonde spider monkey. Then, with the kama end of her kusarigama, she scraped an x through the symbol that animated the suit. It dropped dead with the same overly dramatic camera angles and music as the scythe chick had.

Shooting it a weird sidelong look, Alex sprinted off toward an infamous metal guitarist from decades ago whose gnarly axe had turned into a literal axe, with massive double blades protruding from the sleek guitar body.

Joe zoomed overhead, still carrying Griff in the crook of one arm. As they got within reach of Voodoo Daddy, Joe opened his arms and let the old man drop, hollering, “Bombs away!”

Seeing that Griff was going to crash off the shield, Clay lobbed a pair of Inferno Lances at it, overloading the ghostly barrier. It shattered like glass.

A split-second later, Griff slammed into Saurian, plunging his shortsword into the lizard’s shoulder. The blade only penetrated a couple inches, nowhere near enough to do any sort of lasting damage to the dungeon lord.

It did knock the fedora off the lizardman’s head, though, which was a small win.

“My hat!” The Voodoo Daddy swatted at Griff. “You uncultured swine!”

The old weed jerked the sword out of the lizardman’s shoulder and jumped, turning his ankle, but avoiding a much worse injury from those razor-sharp claws.

“You’re bigger morons than ᵶᶓᶉ⸞ᴞᴥᴪᵑᴎᴔᴚ†to challenge me!” the Voodoo Daddy sneered. “Did you truly think non-magical weapons can harm Saurian the Ostentatious?”

A pair of Wyrd West bullets slammed into his gut unexpectedly, courtesy of Joe and Griff’s distractionary tactics. With an oof, the lizardman stumbled backward, clutching at his gut.

“Obviously not,” Clay said, smoke drifting from his revolver’s bore. “That’s why we brought this.”

Saurian chuckled.

“You’re going to make an excellent addition to my zombified servants, little wizard wannabe.” He reached a clawed hand into his skinny jeans pocket, pulling one of those blank, unformed ZombiePops from its impossible depths. His forked tongue flashed as he hissed, “Damned souls at my behest, doom one more soul to my eternal service!”

As the spectral hand erupted from the figurine, Clay turned and ran—but not very fast. This was what they’d been waiting for.

Icy fingers closed around his upper body, pinning his arms to his sides.

At their freezing touch, his discordant gunslinger tattoos exploded from his skin in a rush of brilliant green light backed by the grungy twang of a western guitar riff.

The Voodoo curse backfired, converted in an instant into Wyrd West energy. The rebounding spell careened into Saurian like a missile, and the throne room shook with the force of its detonation. The lizardman flipped ass over tea kettle through the air, smashing his gaudy wingback throne to splinters between his giant scaly ass and the wall.

Through the dust, Clay caught sight of the Voodoo Daddy staring back at him. For the first time, there a glint of fear in those reptilian eyes. Saurian was realizing that there was a real possibility he might not win this. He had thrown his toughest curse at one of these pathetic humans, and the human had sent it roaring back on him a hundred-fold.

With a sideways blink of his inner eyelids, the dungeon lord covered up his momentary panic and hauled himself back to his many-buckled warboots.

From the shelf of oddments behind him, he grabbed the adorable Greater Blue Wyrm ZombiePop.

“ᵶᶓᶉ⸞ᴞᴥᴪᵑᴎᴔᴚ†,” Saurian hissed, “I command you to kill this spell-slinging human!”

He spiked her figurine on the floor. Instead of shattering into a million shards of multicolored plastic, it puffed up like a smoke bomb, discharging a bright blue plume.

A breeze blew through the throne room, clearing away the cloud to reveal a massive Greater Blue Wyrm fully as long as a midsized sedan. Bacon Bits’s cobalt scales glittering as her long, fishlike tail undulated, and her luscious beard riffled majestically.

“I am sorry, Alex and squadmates,” Bacon Bits rumbled, advancing on Clay. He could tell it was still her, though all trace of the teacup pig’s sweet, high pitch squeal was gone. The draconic eyes were the same. “But I cannot disobey the master of the ZombiePop parade.”

She opened her fang-filled maw, all a hell of a lot sharper than the cutesy little nubs on the figurine, and unleashed a hellstorm of blue flame.

***

Clay dove out of the way and rolled back to his feet, hitting the floor in a dead sprint.

Bacon Bits belched another gout of flame, the fire eating through a display of cheap incense fountains like they were kindling. The speed boost from his Naga ring kept him ahead of the fastmoving Wyrm, but just barely. Worse, he didn’t know how long he could keep this up. He didn’t have a Stamina bar to watch, but he could feel more draining out of him every time his boots slapped the floor. Sludge Slick wouldn’t work on a creature that could just fly over its oily puddle, and he didn’t want to use Haphazard Cast and chance accidentally turning her into an bigger version of herself with the corresponding Strength boost.

The rest of the Jaeger squad watched this deadly game of tag with expressions of mingled dread and uncertainty on their faces. Joe reluctantly raised his suit cannon, but didn’t fire. They didn’t want to attack Bacon Bits, but if they didn’t, she would kill Clay.

Nobody seemed to know what to do.

Clay couldn’t blame them. It wasn’t a decision he would’ve wanted to face down, either. But maybe he could find a way to work around killing the former teacup pig. He snagged a magicka potion from a drop pouch and tossed it back without slowing down.

“Keep her off me,” he sent along an invisible current using Beguiling Whisper. “Voodoo Daddy’s the key, and he’s almost done for. If I can kill him, there won’t be a master of the ZombiePop. I just need y’all to buy me a little time.”

The messaging spell only went one way, but Clay knew they’d heard and understood when they leapt into action.

Griff raced into the path of the soaring Greater Blue Wyrm, planting himself between her and Clay. He thumped his shortsword on his buckler in a challenge.

“Let’s see if I can’t remember a little mob-fighting from my arena days,” he drawled.

Bacon Bits spotted him and tried to serpentine around Griff, but he was a spry old weed. Everywhere she zigged, he zagged. With no other recourse, she opened her mouth to flambee him.

Which was when Joe rocketed right into her side in a full-on quarterback sack.

The air whoofed out of Bacon Bits’s lungs, her fire cutting off mid-spout. The two of them careened crazily through the air, never actually touching the floor, but slamming along the ceiling and walls, crashing into shelving and sconces.

Chonk scrambled along their length as easily as if they were a particularly misshapen and fast-moving tree. With a chittering war cry, he climbed onto Bacon Bits’s face and latched onto her beard. Grabbing a fistful of blue hair in his paw, the mechacoon steered the Greater Blue Wyrm like a bucking bronco, crashing her into wall, shelf, and floor.

With Bacon Bits off his tail, Clay skidded to a stop and started reloading the Ace of Spades. His hands shook with exhaustion and adrenaline overload as he snatched etched silver bullets out of his gunbelt. Thankfully, with the extra Dex, the times he fumbled them, he was able to snatch the dropped cartridges out of the air and shoved them into the cylinder.

A motionless form caught his attention while he worked. Alex. She stood with shoulders bunched, her fists clenched at her sides.

Silently, Clay cussed himself out. She couldn’t fight her best little buddy. And with Griff, Joe, and Chonk keeping Bacon Bits distracted, she didn’t need to.

“Hey Crazy, I need a distraction,” Clay whispered to her, dumping the last of his magicka into another Beguiling Call, meant for her ears alone. At the sound of his voice, she twitched, her shoulders loosening up a degree. “Can you get Voodoo Daddy’s attention for me?”

With a curt nod, she spun to face off with the overgrown lizard.

Using her Uncanny Reach ability, Alex whipped her kusarigama at Saurian’s head, extending its chain mid-shot a good twenty feet to better knock that smug grin off his face.

The lizardman dodged and chucked a clay pot at her. Her leg hooked gracefully through the air, kicking the pot into the far wall. Its acid hissed and ate into the stonework while steam rose in thin wisps. Saurian reached for his blowgun, but Alex drew her Mossberg faster. With Goliath Grip, she could wield two-handed weapons in one fist, and she put that ability good use with the shotgun. She blasted him with shell after shell, racking the Mossberg impossibly with one hand between shots.

Spotting his opening, Clay slipped around the lizardman’s back. That swordosaurus tail snapped and whipped erratically, the razor-sharp spikes at its tip gleaming and ready to cut anybody who tried to flank him to ribbons. Clay dodged a sweep of the deadly appendage, took aim with his revolver, and fired point blank at the back of Voodoo Daddy’s scaly head.

He never saw whether that shot hit the target.

Just as his finger released the trigger, the swordosaurus tail crashed into his shoulder.

Lightning flashed inside his brain.

Agony tore through his shoulder and left arm like a tornado, so loud and frenzied that he didn’t notice he was tumbling across the floor until he slapped into the wall and everything went black.

Furry paws slapped at his cheek. He groaned. A second later, the glass neck of a potion bottle was shoved between his lips, and the furry paw pinched his nose closed.

Clay choked and sputtered, half of the healing potion geysering out of his mouth. The rest he managed to swallow. The pain in his left arm deadened a few degrees, but not enough to have fully healed. He opened his eyes and chanced a glance at the mangled limb.

He winced. The whole arm was hanging by a single string of meat and gristle thinner than his pinkie finger. Not good.

Chonk climbed onto his face and tried to shove another health potion into his mouth.

Clay took the bottle from the mechacoon and shoved him away before Chonk could drown him with good intentions. This time under his own resolve, he chugged the full contents of the potion.

The syrupy concoction burned in his chest like hundred proof. The heat spread out to his fingers and toes and brought a renewed rush of vitality with it. The dangling arm pulled itself back together, strands of muscle tissue regrowing before Clay’s eyes, and the shoulder blade Clay hadn’t even realized was broken snapped back together like puzzle pieces.

A blood-curdling scream from Alex sent ice rushing through Clay’s veins. As he stumbled to his feet, however, he didn’t find his wife clamped in the jaws of a giant lizard. What he found instead was a tiny, furious little berserker on a rampage.

Saurian stood over the shattered remains of his gaudy throne, shooting dart after dart at Alex from his blowgun. He had conjured another ghostly shield to protect himself from her Mossberg, but neither that nor the hail of darts seemed to deter the petite dodge tank.

Pulsing with that angry red light, Alex broke into a dead sprint.

The lizardman’s eyes widened. Even he must know that someone that small could hit like a rocket-propelled freight train when she was in a Bloodborne Frenzy. Blow after blow, Alex hammered at the ghostly shield. She was relentless in her ferocity. Saurian stumbled backward, trying to escape, but she didn’t let up.

Clay scanned the floor, searching for his revolver. There, in a litter of stonework, wrinkled t-shirts, smashed incense cones, and crumpled posters. He snatched it up just as Saurian got a decent footing.

With a whispered curse that shook the Haunt Topic to its foundations, Saurian sent spectral energy flowing out of every piece of junk collectible in the throne room, channeling it like a lightning bolt straight toward Alex.

Clay broke into a run, already knowing he was too slow to throw himself in front of her. What about a Shield of Minor Warding? Could he conjure one in front of her? Shit, it would only eat up 250 points of the damage; that would barely touch whatever this curse was.

“No!” Bacon Bits bellowed, overcome with concern for her favorite member of the squad. The Greater Blue Wyrm ripped herself from Joe’s mechsuited grapple and threw herself at top speed between Alex and the Voodoo Daddy’s deadly spell.

Black and white light strobed, thunder boomed, and colors across the room inverted momentarily before flashing back to normal.

Bacon Bits tumbled to the floor, a gaping hole in her side. In a puff of smoke, she disappeared, the chibi ZombiePop taking her place.

“You son of a…” Alex’s curse trailed off. She wavered on her feet, a matching hole burned in her body armor. Not much of the attack had gotten through Bacon Bits to her, but it was just enough. She tried to take a step toward the lizardman, but her legs gave out.

Clay made it to his wife’s side just in time to stop her from faceplanting. A thousand screaming versions of his own voice assailed his brain at once, but he ruthlessly walled the panic storm off into a corner to be dealt with later. If he had to. Other people got to lose their shit when things went south; Clay Jaeger didn’t. Alex needed him, and he couldn’t fuck up because he was so scared they’d come all this way and fought all this time just for her to die now that he couldn’t form a rational thought.

He eased her to the floor, already digging in his vest for a Health potion with a surprisingly steady hand. It felt like he was watching from outside himself as he poured the potion between Alex’s lips. Luckily, he had more success than Chonk with the red, syrupy liquid. Alex still coughed plenty of the potion back in his face, but the hole in her stomach started mending immediately, helped along by her monster regen.

That insane screaming in the corner of his brain went silent, replaced by cold fury.

An electronic whine filled the throne room.

“Let’s go, Daddy-o,” Joe growled, his suit-mounted cannon glaring red.

The blast rocked Saurian back on his heels. Immediately, Joe started powering up another, but his cannon’s warmup wasn’t fast enough. The lizardman pulled his blowgun.

Clay gently laid Alex on the floor and stood. Drawing the revolver, he took aim at the Voodoo Daddy and fired.

Bloody mist exploded from Saurian’s hand. The blowgun clattered to the floor.

“You fool!” the lizardman roared, yanking a curse pot from his pocket. “You believe because you have some piddly weapon that you can challenge to me? You are nothing! Noth—”

The second bullet slammed dead center into Saurian’s chest, cutting him off mid-rant. The curse pot dropped harmlessly to the floor and rolled away.

Clay let the gun do the talking. He stalked closer as he fired again. And again.

The shots thudded into the Voodoo Daddy’s torso. He stumbled, backing away instinctively, but unable to escape. He attempted conjure up another shield, but it failed.

“No!” the lizardman roared. “I refuse to be defeated by Wyrd damage! I am Saurian the Ostentatious, I make my own fate!”

“Not today you don’t,” Clay said, firing the last shot in the cylinder.

Saurian caught it right in the teeth.

The lizardman’s head lolled back, then his body followed, toppling almost as slowly as the anime characters had. Except this time there was no heart-wrenching music and multiple camera angles to draw out his death.

With a boneshaking thud, the dungeon lord fell dead on the throne room floor.

***

“Diga diga doo, the Voodoo Daddy’s dead,” Joe sang. In a blink, he had his mechsuit off and was back to his everyday tin pants, jorts, and flannel. He patted Bertha lovingly. “Sorry you didn’t see much action, girl. Next time, I promise.”

Glare still locked on the still form of the lizardman, Clay stuck the smoking revolver back in its holster.

A feminine groan from behind him made him spin around. Alex was sitting up and rubbing at her head.

“Ugh, I feel like I went on a bender with Chonk and Joe.” She glanced around the destroyed throne room. “Did we win?”

“I think so.” Clay looked down at his hands. He didn’t look or feel different. Maybe Saurian wasn’t really dead, just in some weird lizard coma?

All of a sudden, the spook rave music cut out with a screech, and a driving drum track hammered through the throne room. Golden light burst from Clay’s skin, shining as bright as any of his blinding Control Lights spells, and an invisible force lifted him off his feet.

All the minor bumps and bruises he’d taken during the fight burned away in an instant, and that shaky feel of too much adrenaline for too long washed out of his veins. Even the blood and dust and dirt disappeared, leaving him cleaner than he’d probably been since the last precious hot shower he’d taken back in the Cans at Camp Liberty.

The light shifted from a brilliant gold to that Wyrd West green, this time shining from beneath his skin. Gunslinger tattoos replaced the ones that had disappeared in the eruption of the Nega-Voodoo spell. There were even more than he’d had before. The magical ink crawled across his body from throat to ankle, marking him up like a cowboy yakuza, before finally fading to the India blue of a decades-old tattoo.

Thin writing, similar to the quest texts he’d seen, appeared before his eyes.

Alteration Complete

New Race Assigned: Incant (Freehold)

New Class Created: Mystic Fateslinger

╠═╦╬╧╪

Clay Jaeger

Level: 7

Race: Incant

Class: Mystic Fateslinger

Alignment: Wyrd

Exp: 1,013 Exp; to next level: 4,760

Available Characteristic Points: 30

Health: 168/168

H-Regen / 5 Sec: 23.5

Magick: 452/452

Magick-Regen / 5 Sec: 26.67

Stats:

· Strength: 19 (17 + 2 item bonus)

· Constitution: 13 (12 + 1 item bonus)

· Dexterity: 26.5 (23 + 3.5 item bonus)

· Intelligence: 39.22 (37 + 2.22 item bonus)

Attributes:

· Armor Rating: 75

· Melee Attack Damage: 179

· Ranged Attack Damage: 213 (188 + 25 Wyrd Damage item bonus)

· Spell Damage: 220

· Movement Rate: +7.3%

· Critical Hit Chance: 10.3%

· Critical Hit Damage: +63.25%

Active Effects:

· Magick Reserve Regen

· +18% Fire Resistance

· +13% Quick Draw Speed, Reload Speed, and Firing Speed

· +39% Wyrd Damage to Voodoo-Aligned Creatures

· +39% Spell Resistance

Mystic Fateslinger Skills:

· Fateslinger

· Infinite Ammo

· Spelled Ammo

· Friendly Fire

Player Special Skills:

· Ranged Weapon Proficiency (Ranged Skill) – Lv. 1

· Firearm Mastery (Ranged Skill) – Lv. 4

· Weapons Specialty: Pistol – Lv. 1

· Cartography (Trade Skill) – Lv. 1

· Armorer (Trade Skill) – Lv. 1

· Discordant Inversion Tribal Tattoos (Voodoo) – Lv. 5

╠═╦╬╧╪

“Holy shit,” he whispered. “It worked. I’m an Incant.”

Clay scanned his new and improved the character sheet, feeling a knot in the pit of his stomach unclench for the first time in months. Although he’d reassured Alex time and time again that nothing would happen—that they’d both survive and be able to ride off onto the sunset strip together—he hadn’t ever really believed it. Not totally. Life had given them more than their fair share of tough breaks, and deep down he’d half expected this to be just one more. But they’d done it. The Wasteland was a deadly place for anyone, but now he and his family had the skills to navigate it with at least a small level of confidence.

And now that they could all gain experience and levels from their kills, their power would only grow.

Hell, he’d already hit level seven and his overall stats had skyrocketed, even though his Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, and Intelligence hadn’t moved an inch. His Health and Magicka were way up, and he could now passively regenerate both given enough time. His melee, ranged, and spell damage had also doubled or even tripled in some cases, plus he’d unlocked a bucketload of innate abilities and just as many Special Skills. He glanced at Fateslinger, focusing on the words, and text swam across his vision.

Fateslinger: As an initiate of the Sacred Art of the Arcana Gun, Fateslinger allows the wielder of the Wyrd basic proficiency in all ranged weapons and grants them an added armor bonus when wearing medium armor. Additional, melee and ranged weapon damage is now calculated using an Intelligence Modifier instead of traditional Strength Modifier, significantly increasing damage output.

He whistled softly and read on.

Infinite Ammo: Passively convert Magicka into custom ammunition, designed to fit virtually any firearm. Ammo cannot be generated while in combat and still needs to be manually loaded into any weapon system.

Spelled Ammo:  Bless or Curse ammo with pre-cast spells and hexes, which activate on contact with an enemy combatant.

Friendly Fire: Ranged healing has never been easier. As a Fateslinger, shooting allied party members now heals them for one-fifth ranged attack damage, and critical hits add double regenerative bonuses.

In the background, he heard Joe whoop and felt Alex throw her arms around his neck. The skill descriptions disappeared, only to be quickly replaced by a host of new notifications that kept on coming like the old Galaxy Wars opening crawl.

As the victor over Saurian the Ostentatious, Spiritworld Bocor, you have the option to absorb each soul he has zombified for an additional +20 Intelligence, or to become the new master of the ZombiePops in his possession at time of death.

Creatures summoned from ZombiePop figurines serve their master until the creature’s Health reaches 0, the master is killed, or the master banishes them back into the figurine. After eight hours in the figurine, the creature may be resummoned at full Health. Rejected ZombiePops will revert to their animate form.

Available ZombiePops:

1 (Greater Blue Wyrm)

1 (Apprentice Plague Doctor)

1 (Neon Green Grub)

Clay scowled, his jaw hardening into a grim line. No way was he keeping a slave, no matter what the prompt tried to call it, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to absorb a bunch of unsuspecting dungeon monsters for any level of Intelligence boost, not without giving them a chance to fight back.

“Clay?” Alex touched his arm.

“One sec, Crazy.” Clay made his selections, then picked up the Bacon Bits ZombiePop. “Bacon Bits, I command you and the other ZombiePops to do whatever you want. You’re free.”

Blue smoke billowed from the chibi figure, and Bacon Bits erupted. Near a destroyed shelf along the far wall, a low-level plague doc and a bright green grub burst from similarly kitschy figurines.

“Alex!” the Greater Blue Wyrm rumbled happily.

“Bacon Bits!” Alex threw her arms around as much of the former teacup pig’s huge true form as she could manage.

Griff chuckled and patted the pair on the shoulder like an indulgent grandpa.

“Hooray, the gang’s all here!” Joe revved Bertha in celebration. Chonk clambered up Joe’s leg and hugged the grinning redneck’s head before joining in and gunning his hedge trimmer arm in a high-pitched dangerous version of a fist-pump.

Another notification appeared before Clay.

Congratulations! You have defeated the current Dungeon Lord of the Haunt Topic, Saurian the Bocor. This Stronghold is now vacant; as a Freehold Incant you may claim it for yourself and assume the role of Dungeon Lord.

If you dismiss your rightful claim, the Dungeon will lie fallow. Be advised, however, that any current Floor Overseer will be entitled to lay claim for themselves if you decline. Should another monster claim this Stronghold, you will have to challenge them in a duel and win to reassert your superiority.

Would you like to claim Dungeon Location: Haunt Topic? Yes / No

Clay knew he didn’t want the place. Being tied down wasn’t what anybody in the Jaeger squad wanted at this point. But he knew someone who had risked her life for a chance to sit on the Haunt Topic throne.

“Bacon Bits, is there some way I can make you the dungeon lord of this place?” Clay asked.

The Greater Blue Wyrm’s eyes shined.

“Oh, Clay Jaeger, you are such a mystery to me. Gaining a seat of power and immediately offering it to someone else, when you could instead crush all who stand before you.” She slipped out of Alex’s grasp to nuzzle against Clay’s shoulder in thanks. Slowly she floated back, shaking her head somberly. “No, I must not accept this throne. A Greater Wyrm Farm is too much responsibility for even me.”

“Aw,” Joe pouted. “I was looking forward to visiting the Bait Shop.”

“It would not have been called that!” Reining in her outburst, Bacon Bits looked down at the floor. Was that a blush darkening the scales under her beard? “To tell the truth, I have come to love my place in your squad—in our squad. I wish to stay with Alex and the rest of you. If you will have me, that is.”

“If that’s what you want, you’re always welcome,” Clay said.

“Yeah, who wouldn’t love a dragon watching their back?” Alex slung an arm over the big beast’s neck. Or maybe her back. It was hard to differentiate body parts with a creature that was basically just a head on a tail.

“Technically, I am not a dragon at all,” Bacon Bits said cheerfully. “Their species is a very distant cousin to the Wyrm family. The distinction may seem subtle to an outsider, but when you come to learn all the ways in which Wyrms are far superior to smelly, unwieldy dragons, you will see a great many differences.”

All of which she happily elucidated for them in great detail on their victorious return trip to the Sooq.

***

“Gather ’round, ladies and gents, pull up a seat and hear the tale of how Lumberjack Joe’s big brother slayed the kaiju and turned into the wasteland’s own magical Jesse James,” Joe said, raising his third margarita to the crowd gathered around Tajira’s tiki bar. “I call this chapter, Clayie’s Got a Gun.”

Clay shot an exasperated glance at Alex on the barstool beside him.

With Joe’s increasingly popular Sooq storytelling happy hours, they were never going to be able to keep a secret. It would only be a matter of time before word got out that wastelanders didn’t have to risk their lives raiding a dungeon and killing a dungeon lord to become an Incant—all they had to do was take out another Incant. And God only knew what the Jaeger squad would have to deal with if the government outside the IZ ever got wind of all this.

Alex caught Clay’s look and shrugged. “He’s your brother.”

Shaking his head, Clay took another slug of whisky.

“Jesse James,” he muttered.

“Never heard a’ the guy,” Griff said, sipping at the ancient Scotch Tajira had dug up for him from her collection. “Must’ve been a hell of a warlock.”

“You’re more the Wyatt Earp type.” Alex dusted a piece of dried grass off Clay’s shoulder. “Law and order and a pocketful of crazy friends.”

A reluctant smile tugged at his lips. “Does that mean you’ll be my huckleberry?”

“If you play your cards right.”

Clay glanced around at the gathered host of Sooq retirees who had pulled up lawnchairs and parked Rascals to listen to Joe’s exaggerated version of the battle at the Haunt Topic. Tajira was mixing up a second pitcher of Blue Lagoons for Bacon Bits and Chonk, who was sitting on the Greater Blue Wyrm’s head. Both were obviously already sauced. Griff had tastefully chosen to give the husband and wife a chance to banter under the semblance of privacy by turning his full attention to Joe’s story.

“I’ve already heard this one.” Clay knocked back the last of his whisky and offered Alex his hand. “Want to head back to the tent? If you’re good, I’ll let you check out my new tattoos. All of ’em.”

She laughed.

“You do know how to sweet-talk a lady.” She grabbed his proffered hand and hopped off the barstool.

Like teenagers sneaking out after curfew, they skirted around the edge of the elderly crowd, heading for the far side of the battle wagon. Nobody noticed them leaving the festivities early.

They barely made it past the last retiree before a caustic voice boomed through the campground like it was being broadcast over a set of loudspeakers.

“Listen up, shitstains, this is your Warlord speaking,” it growled from every direction. “One of you jackoffs came stomping into LA and fucked up shit in my territory—shit I single handedly kept settled for twenty fuckin’ years. Either the Sooq sends out the stupid mofo who started a dungeon war in my backyard, or I wipe this whole damn city block off the map.”

It looked they weren’t going to have to wait for the word to spread before the shit hit the fan. Trouble had already come a calling and it was worse than a handful of ambitious wastelanders or a platoon of government black ops mercs. Far worse.

The Warlord of the West was standing on their front step, and he had an army of monsters at his back…