Kitty tried to pay attention as they rode, but the man kept cracking her in the temple as her debuff would start to wear off. This happened rather quickly, the debuff lasting only sixty seconds by Kitty’s calculations. She paid close attention to her health bar, but his attacks only made small greyed out dips that refilled automatically after a few seconds.

  They rode for only about ten minutes, stopping on a ridge sitting above the desert floor. It was wide and housed a shallow cave where the ridge went higher. The ridge itself was not high up but sported a decent drop that transitioned into a slope filled with knee high cacti mid-way to the ground.

  A full spread of cooking utensils was laid out around a fire pit at the top, and Kitty was unceremoniously dumped on the ground beside it. Night had fallen, and with it came a strange effect. The desert stretching out into the distance on one side of the camp was silent. Behind her, a distance from the ridge they were on, trees grew close together to form a wall of foliage she could not see into. Animal noises sounded from within occasionally, creating a distant cacophony to enjoy. Before she could think about it too much, the man got her attention again, appearing from inside the small cave at the top of the ridge.

  Her captor began the work of building a fire, arranging a series of logs before dumping the contents of a metal flask onto them and flinging a struck match into the mess. It whooshed into life, and seemed to enrapture her captor, who stared at the fire while moving to his tools.

  Kitty’s debuff wore off and she could get a good look at her surroundings, which certainly gave clarity to her situation. The cooking utensils were all filthy and matted with dried blood. In the cave behind the man was an abattoir; severed limbs, a dismembered human torso, and various gore was strewn around haphazardly. She squirmed at her bindings again, feeling the loosening of the fibers around her wrists. At her movement, he glanced up and scowled.

  She chose to try and distract him. “So, you like . . . eat people? That’s cool.” Her tone was conversational, even casual.

  His eyes narrowed under the brim of his hat. “Is it?” His voice was little more than a growl, all gravel and bass, barely louder than a whisper.

  “Yeah, why not? That classic wild west cannibal storyline. It’s kinda cool.” Kitty did her best impression of a shrug, still working the knots loose. “What do we taste like?”

  He shrugged at her comment and seemed about to speak but shook his head and turned away. The man went back to sharpening his tools, having forgotten that she was in danger of escaping.

  She made a slight face. “Why don’t you untie me, and we can go hunt some NPCs together. I’d be into tryin’ it.”

  He shook his head immediately. “No.”

  “Guess we won’t be friends then?” Kitty put on her best innocent smile as she wiggled her wrists and made the gap in the rope grow a bit more.

  A new voice sounded. “What you doin Abraham!?” It was higher pitched and cracked in mirth.

  Her captor looked over his shoulder at an older man approaching. Where Abraham was bulky and broad shouldered, this man was downright scrawny. He wore little aside from a pair of ragged pants held up with a stained rope in place of suspenders. A wide brimmed and ratty sombrero was atop his head, but he swept it off as he approached, revealing a huge bald spot surrounded by long wispy white hair. His hands and feet were blackened with soot, and he carried a bandoleer of broad metal flasks which he dropped behind Abraham.

  “Supper.” Abraham went back to his cleaver, rubbing a flat stone against the edge of the blade.

  “Not with her you ain't!” Jacob pointed at her, and she noticed he wore a rusted revolver in a holster made of rope tied around a slab of folded leather. “She’s got a damned bounty AbraHAM.” His rail thin arms went wide. “We needs that money!”

  “Bounty?” He shook his head, leaning on one knee to look expectantly at Jacob.

  The old miner pointed at her again, eyes rolling slightly. “You hav’ta focus on the other player’s face. Then a little info shows up on em, like name and bounty. New feature, last patch.”

  Kitty did as he instructed, focusing on him first. The name Jacob appeared in faintly translucent letters, as did a bounty of almost two thousand dollars. She turned to Abraham and was disappointed to find his bounty was just shy of three hundred dollars. “Really makes me wonder what you’ve been up to, Jacob.”

  Jacob grinned at her and performed a small jig, finishing with a jump to tap his bare heels together. “Hee-hee!” His disturbingly high pitched giggle and dance were her only answers.

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  “Naw, I’m gonna eat her.” Abraham finished with his cleaver and stood with a small grunt, taking a few steps towards her.

  Jacob tackled him around the waist, and both men went into a tangle on the ground next to her, struggling and cursing at each other.

  “She’s worth money damn you!”

  “I’m hungry!!”

  “Oh shut up, you’s always hungry fatty!”

  “I am NOT fat!”

  Kitty rolled her eyes at the strange players and continued struggling against her bonds while they scrapped. The fight mostly consisted of Jacob engaging Abraham in different holds and Abraham struggling to catch the wirier man. Jacob ended the fight by swatting Abraham in the temple with his rusted revolver, standing up and doing his jig again in victory. He nodded once at his now drooling companion and turned to face Kitty as she stood up and shrugged off the last of the ropes. She graced him with her best predatory smile, reaching her right arm up to grip the butt of her shotgun.

  “Woah now little lady, whatcha doin there?” Jacob asked.

  His smile was no less predatory, and his revolver was already in hand, hanging loosely at his side. Time seemed to slow for the two of them, and Kitty was able to watch his hand movements very closely. She noticed his trigger finger crawl into place and swung the shotgun down as she dropped to a knee. He whipped his gun up and fired, the bullet whining through the air her head had just occupied, and she didn’t let him fire again, giving him one of the barrels of her shotgun directly to his gun hand.

  The gun smoke drifted away to the sound of Jacob howling in pain, and he danced in a tight circle while gripping his hand. When he turned back, Kitty could see that his hand had been reduced to a tangle of gore. He gripped it at the wrist and his howl of pain became a cackle of amusement, as he watched the torn up fingers flopping uselessly while he moved the buckshot riddled hand.

  “Ya gave me a nasty debuff,” Jacob accused. He glared at her for a second, before feeling at his satchel. “Oho! That feels like a perk quest, maybe I should be thankin ya.” With his smile in place, he reached down for his revolver before noticing that it was clearly broken. His smile faltered for a moment, but then he simply reached for Abraham's cleaver instead, lifting it and rushing her.

  Kitty squeezed the second trigger, sending a load of buckshot into Jacob’s side as he charged her. His howl of glee turned into pain as he stumbled in his charge and went past her to the cliff edge, where he slumped to his knees. His voice changed, suddenly quite normal. “OK that hurts . . . I give. You win. Truce.”

  He tossed the cleaver aside and started rifling through his satchel with his good hand, seeming to have forgotten her entirely. She watched him, slinging her now empty shotgun across her back, before she was suddenly struck and knocked flat on her face.

  Abraham’s debuff seemed to have worn off, as he grunted from on top of her and tried to reach for the stained cleaver Jacob had dropped. Kitty yowled and lunged up to tear his ear off with her teeth. When he shrieked and rolled off from her, she spit the chunk of bloody flesh into his face and kicked him once, hard in the stomach. He clenched up with a grunt, trying to defend his belly. He was staring at her, confusion and just a hint of fear in his expression.

  She spared a glance at Jacob, seeing that he was working on binding the wound in his side while muttering to himself. Kitty could hear variations of the phrase “fat idiot” uttered more than once. She reached for the cleaver, but Abraham grabbed onto her legs and tripped her, sending her into the dirt face first once more.

  “Starting to get tired of that sensation.” Kitty growled while her fingers closed around the handle of the cleaver. She whipped it back at Abraham, but he saw the blade coming and let go, rolling to the side to get away from her. Chopping at him while he retreated, she chased Abraham into his cookfire, where he rolled directly into the flames. Through sheer bad luck and lack of foresight, he rolled onto and crushed a lantern as he went into the fire.

  With most of his back and shoulders aflame, Abraham jumped upright and began to flail in panic. Jacob chuckled from his kneeling position, still messing with his bandage as he peeked over his shoulder. Kitty stepped around the campfire and started poking at Abraham with the barrels of her shotgun, trying to steer him closer to Jacob as he gyrated and slapped at his flaming shoulders.

  “You get away from me you fat flamin’ turd!” Jacob shouted.

  Jacob jumped to his feet and tried to dodge his incoming accomplice. Kitty took that moment to whack Abraham in the temple with the butt of her shotgun and the man fell limply onto Jacob. Both men tumbled over the lip of the ravine, Abraham with a pained wail, and Jacob with a resigned string of curses. Kitty peeked over the edge to see them tumbling into the field of cacti and looked away as the screams of pain started in earnest.

  “Well, I guess I should thank BlackLight. All my life I’ve wondered if something was wrong with me. If I was a monster,” Kitty muttered. She swept her gaze around the camp with a slight shudder. “A couple hours in this game and I know I’m not. Not really, anyway.”

  Looking around their camp for anything of worth or interest didn’t take long. After draining their shared canteen of its water, Kitty was pleased to see her dangerously low hydration bar topped off and comfortably green again. She left with the stained cleaver and bandoleer of flasks, which turned out to contain lamp oil. The oil gave her an idea for improving her basic Molotov crafting recipe, but she wisely chose to put some distance between her and the monstrous players she had bested before implementing it. Finding her horse tied to a tree just outside camp alongside two others, she mounted and began her trek to town again, first cutting the other two loose to wander off.

  A quick glance at her map was enough guidance to put her on the right track, with little other than scrub and cacti to break up the landscape. Kitty rode for a while in peace, heading in the general direction of town while the sun began to dip low beyond the horizon. As it went down, the moon rose full and glowing on the other side of her and provided plenty of illumination for the desert. She became quite pleased to see the dusty green scrublands appear around her once more, letting her know she was back on the right path. Somewhat less pleasing was the sound of a rattlesnake warning directly in front of her mare.

  Before she could react, her ass was in the dirt once more.