At the time of writing, this blog post is several hours late (to say nothing of how late my daily #vss365 posts are on my social media channels!). No idea of what happened to my time keeping this week, but if you see it, please return it to me as I've still got a lot to do.
It's Phantom Dawn time again, and I know I've said it a lot, but this time, it is the bridge to the final arc of the story. Will it be good is a different question but before we get there, let's catch up with our favourite duo...hang on a moment...
The Comic Tales of Brennan and Riz
Yup, another multipart adventure. I couldn't resist given Halloween season. What mischief will Riz cause all on his lonesome? Well, you'll have to find out next week.
An interesting error here, on the paper copy, panels 2 and 3 are the exact same colour. Not sure why my phone decided to brighten the middle one till it took on a different hue.
Short Diversions: Phantom Dawn Chapter 17
As stated above, this is the start of the final arc of this story and this chapter really should not have been this long, just being a transition and all. Ideally, this means that there should be 4 chapters left to do. We'll see if that's the case.
Phantom Dawn Chapter Index
Chapter 16
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Chapter 16: Worst Time to Strike
Neal and several onlookers rushed over to where Rose had fallen. He remembered the first time he saw her fighting one of the monsters, how the first use of that power had weakened her. He could only summarise that using it for longer periods, or even using more of it to fight stronger foes needed a recharge of sorts. At least, he hoped this was the case.
Mason had already picked her limp body up, ready to move her to wherever she needed to be, while Kurz stood a little bewildered, till he realised who was carrying her.
“Put her down you idiot!” he shouted.
“What? Back in the dirt? What kind of idea is that!” Mason yelled in return. “We need to get her somewhere safe, I mean, what? Were you going to just leave her here!”
“Crying out loud…No, I wouldn’t just leave her here…”
“Good, then I was right to pick her up wasn’t I?”
“That isn’t what I meant…”
“You two! We need to take her back to the hideout, so now isn’t the time for pointless bickering,” Neal said, fighting the urge to bang their heads together.
“Lead the way, I’ll make sure she’s safe and sound!” Mason puffed out his chest, as if he was immensely proud of his put upon role.
“Why are you okay with this?” Kurz said to his grandfather, who brushed it off.
“Right now, we have to get Rose some place to rest, anything else can wait.”
Kurz took one look at Mason, already following Neal, carefully leading the way.
“Damn it,” he cursed himself.
Back at the hideout, Si had been busy, the second he had heard of the trouble, he began packing for his escape, scouring the whole place for anything he thought might have been useful. This turned out to be not a lot, and those bits he did find, were simply too impractical to shove in a little bag. He also knew that his actions would be frowned upon, but he rationised it as being okay. Afterall, in the end of things, he wasn’t a fighter, he was the people person, the guy who made contacts. He’d go where the people where, and he assumed that the majority of people would be currently fleeing for their lives, leaving the town behind. He intended to do the same when he heard the monster’s roar, and the subsequent sounds of someone holding it at bay. Being as careful as he could have been ,he even peered out of the window to get a glimpse of what he’d be running from, but all he saw was the arrival of the big bug-like creatures, and their subsequent retreat. Then came the cheers that sounded larger than the screams had been. This was the confused state that Neal and the others had found him in when they burst through the door, Mason still carefully holding Rose.
“Ah!” Si said, almost jumping out of his skin. “Who let him out!” he pointed a shaking finger at Mason.
“I ask myself the same thing.” Kurz admitted under his breath.
“This isn’t the time for this conversation,” Neal said sternly. “Mason, put Rose on the sofa the best you can. The beds upstairs might be better, but I’d rather she be somewhere in sight. That way we can keep a close eye on her.”
Mason did as instructed, being ever so careful with her, making sure that she wasn’t disturbed.
Kurz, for his part, had brought the sword with him, having found the weight surprising considering the way that Rose had been using it. He placed it next to her, still managing not to make eye contact with Mason, making it clear that he did not tolerate having to share the same space.
“I think we’d better set up watches for the night, and we should be ready to get out of here at the first sign of trouble,” Kurz said.
“You really don’t have to tell me twice!” Si said, butting into the conversation, and causing all the other participants to turn to him. “I mean…What happened to her?” he deftly changed the subject and pointed to Rose.
“Rose fought off one of the monsters from the waste land,” Neal answered, trying to explain in as few words as possible.
“She fought off one of the monsters? Are we sure that she’s not a monster?” Si countered with. “I mean, should we be standing close to her? Or is she like some kind of magnet that’ll bring the monsters to us?”
“Keep talking about her like that and I’ll hang you from that coat rack over there,” Mason muttered. “She’s clearly an angel sent to fight for us.” He said that last part in all seriousness.
“I’m sorry, but why is the guy who beat me up earlier now standing with us like he’s part of the gang? Especially since he’s threatening me again!” Si followed up her earlier question, bringing it into the forefront.
“I’m here because of her, not you two, alright?” Mason explained. “She’s giving me a second chance, and I’m going to take it, and that’s that.”
“Second chance? You think you deserve a second chance. Who’s fault is it that we’re in this mess? Who blindly served Finch again, the man who is trying to kill everyone in this town right now, by your own admission!” Kurz let his anger boil over.
“I don’t think I deserve one, but she clearly does! That’s what’s important right now! Well, that trying to stay alive I guess, but I’m standing next to her!” Mason crossed his arms, and turned away from Kurz, who was standing looking incredulous over what he’d just heard.
“You…” he began to mutter, till Neal interrupted their fight.
“I’ll not have either of you acting this way while she is resting! You want to have another fight that badly go and do it outside! I’ve had enough of the bickering while the town remains in danger!” Neal’s outburst left him a little breathless. “If you want to do something constructive however, please go and stand guard outside. Now that night has fallen, it’ll be harder to see if any attack is imminent…” Neal helped himself down into a chair. “I’ll watch over her, until the Heaven’s Rods are working again, she may well be our last hope in surviving.”
“I’ll take the first watch, could do with some time to think,” Mason announced as he left the room.
“Thank god, he’s gone,” Si let out a small sigh of relief. “Are we going to lock him up again once we’re not getting eaten? Plus what about her, what the hell is her deal?”
“I don’t know,” Kurz replied bitterly, his rage deflated. He looked at Rose, before muttering again. “I just don’t know…Si, stay with granddad and see if he needs anything.”
“What? Stay here? In this soon to be monster infested town? We could use this time to get the heck out of here!” Si had more to say along those lines, but a glare from Kurz put a stop to that. “...Or we could sit back here, let the doom come to us, you know?”
Kurz still wasn’t smiling at any of this.
“Fine, I’ll stay and help out your granddad. Happy now?” Si asked.
“I wish…” Kurz said nonchalantly before turning to leave the room himself.
“Where are you going?”
“Mason was right about one thing I guess, I need some time to think.”
“So you’re just going to leave me here?”
“Do you want to go outside in the cold night air and be the first warning against monsters?”
“Well when you put it that way…”
“Good,” Kurz said as he opened the door. “I’ll be back in a bit to take over the watch.”
Si watched as he exited the room, and then slumped into a chair next to Neal, who had been following their conversation, but declined to add anything.
“...Sitting in silence it is…” Si let his head fall to the table.
Mason had found a spot to sit on a rocky outcrop, the town just to his back, and the wide expanse of the wastes in front of him. The darkness didn’t bother him, and neither did the ethereal glow from the Phantom Dawn above, casting its strange light that twisted the shadows. Despite what logic would dictate, the light did nothing to dispel the inky blackness, instead it highlighted it more, giving it a dreamlike quality. He thought back to the first time he encountered such a scene, when he and his grandmother were travelling from town to town, moving by night to minimise the time in the sweltering heat of the days back then. He remembered how his grandmother had put on a brave face on what they were doing, trying to treat it like a game, despite fully knowing how much danger the pair had been in constantly. The theatrics she’d employed had stuck with him, and he considered that was why he’d been so theatrical being Finch’s underling. He knew he had to play the part of the hired muscle, without ever wanting to do the more extreme acts.
One time, Finch wanted him to kill a couple who had been defiant to him. Mason responded by burning the house down in a grand fashion. Finch had been pleased but of course didn’t know that Mason had already paid off the couple to leave using what little money he had that no one else knew about. The flaw in this plan was that, aside from the reputation it gave him, Finch started asking him to do it more and more, with Mason have to resort to crazier schemes to keep his sanity intact. That was why he’d done what he needed to with Kurz’s group. He’d hoped to chase them away, yet it had been his facade that broke completely. To him though, maybe it hadn’t been a bad thing. It allowed him to escape from under Finch’s ever tightening grip, and he did get to meet her.
Mason looked around, making sure he was fully alone, and then he started trying to recite some poetry from his memory, turning half forgotten fragments into full passages. He repeated them to himself, wanting to commit them to memory, and then, he’d tell them to Rose, and anyone else who would listen, to get them to see that he was not who he appeared to be.
“What are you talking about?”
Kurz’s voice startled Mason who quickly stood to face him, having just realised that he was able to get the drop on him insultingly easy.
“N-Nothing! I was just…Er,,,Remembering old times. Why are you out here? Shouldn’t you be resting till your shift, or do you want to have a go again.”
“I came out here to think, not to talk to you so don’t worry about that,” Kurz said walking to stand beside him, facing out into the wasteland. “My mum always told me that the wastelands were a paradox, full of danger yet full of potential…”
“My granny used to say the same. Yet here we are, facing down the danger, yet seeing little of that potential, but then again…” Mason trailed off as he realised that Rose had come from the wastes, fitting what they were told quite well.
“You’ve got a one track mind, you know that?” Kurz said, knowing what he was probably thinking about.
Turning away so that Kurz couldn’t see his embarrassment, Mason cleared his throat.
“Don’t know what you mean…” He voice trailed away to silence, as the pair stood there, looking out.
“Why…” Kurz muttered.
“What?”
“Why should I forget everything that happened between us?”
“It would make life a bit easier if I didn’t have you yelling at me every time you saw me. I know I’ve done some bad things, though not as bad as the things you think I’ve done, but I had to do what I could to survive. You must have done the same right? Everyone is just trying to survive,” Mason explained, and the way he did it caused Kurz to look at him with a side eye.
“I never pictured you to be the sort of person to speak like that.”
“Would it be easier for you if I was just a brain dead devotee of Finch’s? I played the part I was given, portraying the person Finch wanted me to be.”
“You could have just walked away, you know. You choose to stay at his side.”
“Spoken like someone who was never in that situation. It’s always easier to speak outside of the problem then to be in it. Finch took me in when I had no one else, he provided me food and shelter. I was still a kid…” Mason stated, his eyes never leaving some imagined spot in the distance.
“What happened with your grandma?”
“She…She put herself in the way between me and a monster. I was rescued by a group of people from a nearby town, but quickly abandoned. Apparently people will only care about rescuing kids from certain death while it gives them glory, any other time like they don’t give a damn.”
“So that’s when Finch found you…”
“Yup…If you don’t mind me saying something though, your mother must have been a badass for Finch to send Eros after her. He only ever got used against Finch’s biggest threats…or when you screwed up badly while working for him.”
The turn of the conversation towards his own mother caught Kurz off guard, amd while there was a spike in his anger, he subdued it.
“I never learned till much later what my parents were doing, or why Finch wanted them dead over it. I found the bodies all the same though, it was only through my grandfather that I learned everything. All I cared about then was hurting Finch and anyone associated with him.”
“You certainly did that…” Mason rubbed his cheek from where both Kurz and Rose had hit him within the space of a morning. “Funny though, or tragic if you want to look at it like that, we’re both orphans from different sides.”
“I guess we are, we’ve both lost things important to us.”
“Just like Rose.”
“Had to work her into this didn’t you?”
“No, listen. She’s lost herself. That could just be the tip of the iceberg as well, who knows what else she’s gone through. You don’t just forget things like that without going through something first. I mean, she lost an entire identity and everything with it.”
Kurz hadn’t thought about it like that, and he was loath to admit it but Mason did have a point. Still, it didn’t erase the questions he had about her, and what she was, but at the same time, he never thought about what she was going through, or what she was feeling. He’d never treated her like an equals, only ever as a stray that his grandfather inexplicably picked up. He let silence drop in between them once more, thinking about every interaction they had and how he’d responded with her. He cursed himself, but at the same time, it left him confused, as it also didn’t change any of his concerns, they still needed addressing,
Kurz was going to say ‘even so’ but never got the chance, as the silence was irreplaceably broken by another roar that shattered the bewildering peace that had settled over the town. It dwarfed what they had heard before in tone and volume, the ground itself reverberating.
“What was that?” Mason asked in a panic.
“Nothing good,” Kurz said through gritted teeth, trying to look out into the night, wanting to see some spectral shape that they could attribute the roar to. He made something out, a shape still on the horizon, one that was slowly getting bigger. He could see no details but he could tell that it was on another scale entirely.
“We have to get people moving!” Mason shot up and started running back into the town.
Kurz started back as well, but the shape was getting bigger all the time, and he knew it was going to be upon them…
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Next Chapter (not finished yet)
That's it for this week.
Till next time...
Keep on writing
Peter James Martin
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