Page 2 of The Only Way Out Is Up

The Twisted could break Star’s shell eventually, but the Twisted doesn’t know that. It doesn’t know anything other than the urge to destroy, and its attack isn’t getting the job done. It shifts its attention to Star’s limbs, grabbing one with its forelegs and one with a hindward claw and yanking in opposite directions. In a shower of red light and rending wire, both legs tear away from Star’s shell. He scrabbles like an upturned turtle, trying to get clear, but the Twisted holds him in place with still other limbs.

Something to consider in the next design. Maybe an extra limb on his back to maximize traction in unusual circumstances…

My thoughts are a little hazy. I’ve got both hands pressed over the hole in my thigh, but the amount of blood I can feel pumping out between my fingers is frankly alarming.

[Admission: this is not going well.]

You think?

[Suggestion: do something.]

Options are limited. Head is fuzzy. I’ve got a trump card, but fuck, it’s expensive…

Maybe there’ll be a yellow in there to make up for it? Moon, let there be a yellow in there to make up for it.

Star, Bug Zapper!

His gleeful chuckle rings in my mind. A panel on his body slides open and a new limb folds out. This one is short and ends in a stubby rod and definitely does not look like a mechanical dick, get that thought out of your head right now. It presses against the Twisted’s hide like an awkward boner in a chaste hug. I feel a pull on my spirit, like someone has a fishhook through my heart and gives the line a gentle tug.

Star is a runic, made of metal and wire, built around a foundation sigil at his heart. That single meta-verb is connected by threading wire to other sigils: verbs to define effects, modifiers to shape them, nouns to direct their power. Strings of MOVE sigils animate his limbs, RESISTS harden his armor, PERCEIVES focus his optics, while STRONG and FAST add extra oomph.

Bug Zapper is built around a single precious EXPLODE, a unique sigil that destroys itself and anything connected to it in a ferocious burst of power. It’s connected to a SHOCK, the signifier for WIRE, and a few modifiers to tighten the effect. When it goes off, energy floods wildly through any sigwork system in range; a runic’s foundation sigil can handle the surge, but the distributed architecture of a Twisted is uniquely vulnerable. I just hope it’s enough.

The weapon goes off with a noise like a swarm of bees taking flight. The middle section of the Twisted goes into wild convulsions, crawling with arcs of white lightning punctuated by bursts of red as its sigils explode. I wince with every blast—I need those sigils, moon damn it—but at least it seems to be working.

After a second or two, the lightning dies away and I hold my breath. Twisted don’t have a foundation sigil; they’re more like a self-sustaining network of malicious power, and killing them can be tricky. If you can take a big enough chunk out of them, though, the remnants of their energy usually bleed away. Usually.

The two ends of the centipede-thing thrash for a few moments longer. Then, to everyone’s relief, they go still. Star scrambles away from its slack grip, righting himself expertly on his now-asymmetric legs.

[Assessment: effective], he informs me. [Observation: you are leaking badly.]

“You don’t say,” I mutter aloud. I reach one bloody hand around to my pack, every movement sending waves of dizziness through me. The pain has reached an existential crescendo that scrapes at the edges of my vision. If I pass out now, I’m fucking dead.

[Query: can I assist?]

You can tell Star is really worried when he drops his sarcasm. I find what I’m looking for in my pack and yank it out, gasping.

Gonna cauterize, I tell him. Even my mental voice is sounding thick. Prob’ly pass out. You have enough legs left to strip the sigils from that thing?

[Assessment: sufficient. Query: do you have enough blood left to make it home?]

S’good question. I bring the little stick to the wound in my thigh and shove my gloved finger between my teeth. My mouth fills with the tang of copper. We’ll see, right?

Like Bug Zapper, the stick contains a string of one-use sigils, starting with EXPLODE. I didn’t build this one, so I don’t know all the details, but BURN and FLESH are definitely in there, too. Expensive piece of kit, but what’s your life worth, right?

S’ a joke. I know what mine’s worth—jack fucking shit. Makes this a pretty bad trade, all told. I’m attached to it, though.

I kick the thing off. New, hitherto unglimpsed vistas of pain open up before me for a moment before darkness closes in.

TWO

It’s nearly morning by the time I make it home.

Funny how we cling to the cycle, day and night, morning and afternoon. We can see the fake sunlight that illuminates Yesod and Hod only as a gleam on the cavern walls; the big work-lights that hang from the bottom tier never dim. (Except when their sigils fail and they rain down showers of white-hot sparks.) No such thing as darkness down here in the Heap, but we pretend there is all the same.

Gotta sleep sometime, I guess. I want to sleep right now. I want it so badly my eyelids are drooping and my feet feel like someone tied concrete blocks to them. But probably if I pass out again I’ll bleed to death, which is a powerful incentive to keep staggering forward. Eventually I reach our makeshift back door—everything in the Heap is makeshift, make do, lashed together from repurposed bits of something else—and start hammering on it. My hand leaves a smear on the corrugated metal.

Star is already out of sight, taking cover in the hill of junk that abuts the bakery. Over the years he’s wormed it through with tunnels so he can come and go without being seen. The last thing I need is someone seeing a runic on its own and screaming Twisted.