Sam

  After the talk about Big Deal Buck and Lord Brimstone and their relative strengths, the conversation naturally shifted onto the very strongest people on the Frontier. Sam had been interested in knowing about this for some time, and for once found herself listening intently as Mongrel began expositing in his slow, self-indulgent drawl.

  "Well, far as I know, there's only a handful of Level 30s rattling around, and they are some scary customers, every one of them. As for who's the strongest, most would agree it comes down to two candidates. First is Crow the Godkiller—no surprises there. Second is the Nightmare King of Octant Five, also called the Immortal.

  "There's not much known about the former. Not about his build, or his appearance, or even what octant shot him out. It's all a big mystery—the kind folk love to go back and forth on over a mug of beer." Mongrel leaned forward on the opposite side of the crackling fire, uneven teeth glinting in the warm light as he cracked a wide grin. "Some think he diced the goddess with their souls as the stakes, and he cheated her to win. Some think he's a demon who gained possession of a human body. Some think his secret is he found a way to build atomic bombs here on the Frontier, if you'll believe that." His eyes swiveled onto Apples, who was fussing with her boot laces, knees drawn up to her chest. "What about you, new girl?" he asked. "You got a story about the Godkiller? You must've heard about a hundred of 'em every night working as a waitress."

  "Well," the young Farmer said thoughtfully, "I heard that he fell in love with the Devil Queen and ventured into the Unmaking to marry her—which is why nobody's seen him since the Deicide—and that he's the father of all monsters."

  Mongrel laughed so spittle flew sizzling into the fire. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard! Who'd ever fall in love with a demon?" He kept on chuckling, wiping imaginary tears of mirth from dry eyes. "Oh, you're an absolute riot, new girl."

  Apples blushed deeply and buried her lower face into her knees to hide it. "It's not like I think it's true or anything," she explained, "it's just something I heard, that's all."

  "Mongrel," Sam said warningly. "Be nice. Can't you tell she's shy?"

  Mongrel just returned a shit-eating grin, sticking out his chin as though daring her to smack it.

  She decided that she would save that kind of measure for a more serious infraction, and settled for wagging her finger at him instead. "So no one actually saw the goddess get killed?" she asked, directing her question at Apples, not Mongrel.

  "I don't think so," Apples replied. "I mean, lots of people say they did. Or, like, a friend of a friend talked to someone who swears they saw it, that kind of thing. No one's ever shown real proof, though—that I've heard of, anyway."

  "The girl's right," Mongrel said, scooting closer to the young woman to reassert his place in the conversation. "They say the goddess walked the Frontier in the Better Times. She'd heal the sick, hear folks' grievances, give out little bits of fortune cookie wisdom here and there. You can bet your ass the resurrectionists wrote down every useless word of it too, put it together in a stuffy old book no one cares about.

  "Anyway, Era must've been pretty confident in her own immortality, because apparently she'd meet with whoever, wherever, no protection or nothing. The accepted story goes that she was in her seat of power at the center of the Frontier—Goldbrand, they called the city in those times, though it's long-since been swallowed by the Unmaking.

  "Crow came to her shining palace and asked for a private audience. Era granted it, and the doors were closed on all angels and boonkin and human servants and such. Crow was the only one who came back out again. A ripple went through the world, so they say. Birds went quiet, horses threw off their riders, hounds turned on their owners. The angels went mad with grief, and some killed themselves while others swore vengeance on humanity.

  "Well, in the girl's favor, some stories do claim that Crow had help from a demon to kill the goddess, and that she swallowed Era's corpse to become the Demon Queen, birthing the Unmaking out of the once-shining Goldbrand, now a tarnished ruin."

  He spread his hands with a grandiose storyteller's flourish. "And so it is written."

  "So it is written," Apples echoed at a low whisper.

  Sam thought about it for a second. "So," she said, playing with the soft spot at the back of her scalp left by Will cutting her skull open, "how do we know that the goddess is even dead? What if she survived Crow trying to kill her, and she's just really mad about it, and she's actually the thing people call the Demon Queen now?"

  Mongrel shrugged. "You missed the part about angels falling on their swords. You wouldn't get that bent out of shape over an attempted murder, now would you?"

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "I suppose not."

  "And if anyone would know for certain what happened to ol' Era, it would be them, wouldn't it? So I think we can be pretty sure that the bitch is dead."

  "I guess."

  "Full points for creativity, though. We'll make a regular theorist out of you yet."

  Sam snorted out a laugh, leaning back on her elbows. "Shut up, dude. What about this Nightmare King fellow? The way you talked up Crow, he must be pretty strong to hold a candle to the guy."

  "Well, I reckon his accomplishments speak for themselves," Mongrel replied with a half-shrug. "He's in charge of the Frontier's only bona fide empire—started out with Octant Five, and recently went and conquered Octant Eight. Apparently he's waging war on Octant Three to swallow that up, too. Ever since the monsters started kicking our prissy little tushies, humanity's been pushed back on every single front, every single octant shrinking closer to the coastlines.

  "Well, the Nightmare King's lands are the only exception. His territories have actually flourished since he came to power a few years back, expanding further and further into the interior, if you'll believe it."

  "That's why they call him the Nightmare King," Apples cut in, voice shy and thin but with eyes that showed an eagerness to share her thoughts. "They say he's managed to drive the monsters back because he's something even worse. They say he's so frightening to look at that people faint at the sight of him, and that he'll take any woman he likes to sleep with her for just one night, then kill her. That he's searching for the wife he lost on Earth, and that he'll know her by her kiss, and he'll keep carving a path through as many women as he needs to until he finds her."

  Mongrel rolled his eyes with a dramatic snort. "Well, aside from all that romantic melodrama, I reckon that's more or less true. These days, he's sequestered in The City That Breathes, and sends his faceless men out to enact his bidding and fight his battles."

  "What's a 'faceless man'?" Sam asked. "And what the fuck is 'The City That Breathes', for that matter?"

  "That's just what they call it," Mongrel replied with a note of strained patience in his voice. "As for the faceless men, they're supposed to be the Immortal's pet army of monsters that have sworn fealty to him."

  "They don't eat or sleep or feel pain," Apples added. "They'll fight until they drop dead from wounds or exhaustion, and follow their master's bidding without question."

  "Pretty spooky," Sam said.

  "They say Crow and the Nightmare King fought once, when the latter was just coming up," Mongrel continued. "They leveled a whole city in the process, but there was no conclusive winner, which is why no one can really say who's stronger out of the two. They say the Immortal got his nickname because he literally can't die. He's been killed a hundred different ways—" Mongrel counted on his fingers, "—hanging, burning, quartering, beheading, exsanguination, impalement, submerged in the ocean, even thrown in a damn volcano if you want to believe some of the more outlandish stories—and he's come back every single time, right as rain, as though nothing ever happened.

  "The why of it is anyone's guess. You've got the usual nonsense like he diced the goddess to gain his immortality—which doesn't make any sense, considering he apparently only came to the Frontier a few years back—as well as more mundane explanations, like that it's some particularly disgusting combination of abilities.

  "If you ask me, I'd say Crow gets too much hype on account of the whole goddess-slaying business. When it comes to actual abilities, no one's got much to say, and it's not like he was a big name before he showed up that day in Goldbrand. The Immortal, on the other hand, has a track record as long as my cock—meaning very, by the way, just so we're clear—and is still adding to it to this day despite his self-imposed exile.

  "Aside from those two gentlemen, there's a vanishingly small group of lifers who are even close to their level. There's Lady Winter, of course, native to our very own Octant Six, who has the power to raise the dead. Then there's Marcille the Revolutionary of Octant Seven, who's generally agreed as the finest enchantress the Frontier has ever seen. There's Florian of Octant Three, the so-called 'most handsome man alive'," Mongrel made air quotes and rolled his eyes to show exactly what he thought of that title, "and Sage, a healer who's been around since the Better Times. He did like Crow and wandered off into the wilderness after the Deicide, never to be seen again. There were maybe two or three other Level 30s that died at various points during the war, but other than that, that's all of 'em."

  "What about the one from Octant Four?" Apples asked.

  "That new pipsqueak? Yeah, I guess I forgot about him. They're all weirdo resurrectionists over there, and I guess this whatchamacallhim's the new king of the freaks or something."

  "The Lion of the West."

  "Yeah. That. Clearly, the kid has a pretty high opinion of himself."

  Mongrel yawned. Then Apples yawned, too. Then Sam yawned, three.

  The conversation tapered off, and they all turned in pretty soon after, bedrolls somewhat softening the hardness of the bare earth. Mongrel had said that thefts and even murders were fairly common at these rest stops, but they were able to sleep all three at once without posting a sentry due to the fact that they had the chimps watching over them from the treeline, two boys at a time in revolving shifts ready to punish any intrusion of privacy with an arrow or two.

  Despite that, Sam had a hard time falling asleep, staring into the failing fire as the graying, burnt-out logs crackled their last. The food and conversation had diverted her for a while, but now that she had nothing to occupy her, she found her thoughts inescapably drawn to Will, his dour, gaunt face appearing in front of her whenever she closed her eyes.

  It sounded like he was heading into danger, going back to Lord Brimstone even after potentially blowing his cover. She could only try to convince herself that he was being as safe as possible, even though she knew well that probably wasn't the case. That boy was way too self-sacrificing for his own good.

  Twelve more days, she thought. Twelve more days, then I'll be able to fish him out of whatever trouble he's managed to land himself in without me.