Wild Arms: The Dee Legacy

By Robin "JChance" MacLachlan

Chapter 1: Encounters

William closed his copy of the Green Book and slid it back into his suitcase as the train slid to a halt with a screech of steel--in the station this time. He had switched the winter coat for a suit jacket, and the Wanderer's backpack for a red leather valise, and even jammed a nice city hat over his untidy blond hair. If it weren't for the staff stashed in the luggage rack overhead, he'd be the perfect image of an Adlehyde swell. At any rate, the train had stopped four times before this just since the last station--twice for an animal on the tracks, once when someone had panicked as it went into a tunnel, and once where a farmer had “liberated” some ties for his fence. They said that riding Gil-Galad Railways was like reading the Green Book--it took a long time, but it made life much more comfortable.

Its founder Vincent Tong couldn't disapprove of this reputation too much, as he readily admitted he had picked, for his company, an obscure name out of that book just so that some of that comfort would attend the thought of a new and rather overwhelming form of transportation. The novel's tale of victory over a land-corrupting evil and its loving depiction of a lush green world had kept it in print since before the First Demon War, usually with enough reverence that its ancient language was preserved alongside a modern translation. It was the only work of fiction to so survive, unless the tales could be credited of a Red Book, which was variously said to be either the one from which it claimed to be excerpted, or a separate tale of earlier events. Perhaps it would be found among the books taken from Dee's refuge in the frozen North--several novels had been found in the bedroom behind the lab, including some claiming the same authorship as the ancient tale. William stood, straightened his tie, retrieved his unassuming ARM, and picked up the suitcase with a profound grunt. He'd never mastered packing light, especially with his addiction to reading.

Predictably, his mother and aunt were waiting when he stepped down from the train. Elizabeth Hetfield-Valeria was everything one would expect of a grey-haired Adlehyde society matron, the hoops of her skirt creating a tremendous obstruction for the crowd on the platform. Emma, on the other hand, looked almost disturbingly like she had fifteen years ago, still wearing a simple green dress under a long pink coat of strange design with wires and tubes trailing from its many pockets. The only concession she had made to age was allowing her hair to return to its natural light brown from the deep green she had once dyed it. Elizabeth now went from obstructing foot traffic to bringing it to a dead halt, simply by shrieking “Billy!” loudly enough that it could doubtless be heard in the castle at the other end of town. William opened his mouth to insist that he really wasn't six years old anymore, but his aunt delivered the same message more forcefully with an elbow to her sister's side and a pained look.

This did not, however, keep Elizabeth from launching into the usual rapid-fire fuss that always attended her son's return from one of his explorations. After the well-rehearsed responses of “Yes, Mother I'm fine” and “Not really, Mother, only one ghost, it wasn't any trouble at all” and so on, he dropped the suitcase--just missing his foot--and let himself be hugged, as usual with a crushing force that seemed intended to ensure that he wasn't, against all evidence, a ghost himself. Then something happened that was far from usual. There was a swift movement behind William, and the suitcase was gone. Emma was the first to notice, and the young man looked in the same direction. Only its eye-catching colour defeated the thief's attempt to vanish into the crowd--it was in the tight grasp of a small girl wearing tan shorts, rather oversized boots, a Baskar rosary, and a far more oversized once-white men's shirt.

William waved off his aunt as she pulled a netgun from one of her pockets, and took off after the girl, reflexively apologising whenever the trailing head of his staff drew a clunk and a curse. His long legs proved deceptively little advantage in such crowded quarters, though, and even less when the girl, not minding the bag's weight one bit, jumped first to the counter, then to the roof, of a newspaper kiosk. Desperately, William reached after her with the staff, somehow managing to catch her necklace with one side of the folded bow. This stopped her, but only long enough for her to turn, take one hand off the case and draw a small but still dangerous-looking knife.

“What?”, the thief asked, with a small shrug and a tone of false innocence. “I need that back!”, William responded. “And I need to eat,” the girl responded, “Bet the case alone's worth a thousand!” The “You rich horse's ass” was not stated, but hung clearly in the air anyway. William racked his brain, and one thought quickly bubbled to the surface. “I...I can hire you! I'm an archaeologist. I need someone who can get into tight spaces.” The girl looked at him, confusedly. “You're a what?” “A...treasure hunter, academic style,” William responded. At the word “treasure”, he could have sworn that he saw the silver glint of a gella coin in the girl's eyes.

She snatched her necklace off the staff, jumped down, and dropped the case right on his shoes, all without putting away the knife. “I'll bite, but you'd better be on the level about this, or are you ever in for it,” she said, gesturing with the blade and then spinning it in her hand a few times before putting it away. “I swear,” William answered through his grimace, “As a Valeria and a Hetfield.” The girl whistled. “That's some money you're talking about. I wonder what it woulda got me. But...a deal's a deal, right? Fifty-fifty, OK?” She asked this with a crooked grin on her dirty face, and held out a hand. It was a lousy deal for someone who hadn't proven she could do anything but run away, but...Valeria couldn't lose the journal, whatever the cost. He shook the girl's hand, and surreptitiously wiped his on his trousers. “My name's William. What's yours?” “Connie. Connaught Flynn,” the redheaded thief answered.

William returned to his family one suitcase and one business partner richer--the latter's hand sneaked towards his mother's purse for a moment before she yanked it back, a nearly-genuine look of embarrassment on her face. They set off out of the station and into Adlehyde proper. “Where's Father? He usually comes out to the station with you,” William asked.

“He's packing for a trip--something's happened at the north ranch. Emma's offered to fly him out there in one of her machines,” Elizabeth answered vaguely. Hector Valeria had come up from being a minor merchant to great wealth and talk of ennoblement on the strength of the cattle business--not that he pretended to be a rancher himself, but he took as much interest as an investor could without getting in the way.

The suitcase seemed to be getting heavier with every step, and William started to despair of getting it to their destination without doing something truly terrible to his back. A giggle from behind him alerted him that his plight hadn't escaped Connie's notice. “Watching you drag that thing hurts. You want me to take it, partner?” Pride warred with pain, and pain won out. “Sure, as long as you take it the same place that the rest of us are going,” the scholar said, perhaps more harshly than he meant to. The girl took the case under one arm--and put the other hand on her hip, balled into a fist. “How stupid do you think I am?!” William's face scrunched up in embarrassment, and he nervously scratched the back of his head, knocking his hat over his eyes. “I don't...I'm sorry...” Another laugh replaced the girl's indignation. “Chapapanga's sake, don't worry so much! Just don't do it again.” “Oh...all right...” William fixed his hat, and the four continued on.

The Valeria townhouse was a conspicuously new assemblage in fantastically carved and richly stained wood--it would be a good hundred years before a house built of good clear timber ceased to be an extravagance on Filgaia. It lay in a carefully designed garden, far enough from the street that voices and hooves were a distant murmur at worst. In the sitting room, they were easily drowned by the clink of teacups on saucers as William and the sisters Hetfield chatted. Connie had zipped upstairs uninvited at the first hint of a bath with running hot and cold water laid on, leaving her elders to a curious conversation--Elizabeth kept attempting to steer it to the latest gossip in Adlehyde society, while her more academic relatives could talk only of the discovery in Arctica and other recent finds.

Thus, the worries that Queen Cecilia was edging up on the official status of Old Maid, and that it might be on account of a torch carried for one of the scruffy Wanderers who'd helped her save the world fifteen years ago, flew right over an intent discussion of Doctor Dee's books, and the recent discovery of a ruined Elw village in the mountains near the north ranch that had Mr. Valeria so concerned, and would William be interested since they had to go that way anyway? He certainly was, and he wondered if his aunt knew anything about studies of artefacts from before the First Demon War. As Dr. Emma's primary interest was technology, and the best of it came from the last years of the war, she allowed that she could not recall much off the top of her head, but her genius mind did hold the names of a few researchers to look into. Then there was an interruption, in the form of Connie returning in one of Elizabeth's fluffy robes (much of it trailing on the floor), and asking if her clothes could be washed. To her credit, she did say “please” regarding her request to take extra care with the shirt.

Then, William noticed something even stranger about the sight of her. “Do you know you have a comb stuck in your hair?” “Of course,” Connie replied, “I thought you could do something about that.” With no further words, she plunked down on the floor in front of the explorer, and without a moment's question, he set to untangling her short red hair. It was then that Elizabeth got off one her one definitive Good Comment of the day. “No wonder he likes her, Emma--she's just like you.”

Since his bags were still packed, William spent the evening chasing down the authors his aunt had mentioned. This involved knocking on the doors of several prominent citizens with extensive libraries, and netted him all the required books, although at the cost of some embarrassment on two occasions--first, when he woke up an early-sleeping and particularly disagreeable old burgher who would prefer not even to think about his wife's scholarly hobbies, and second, when a wrong turning led him to one of Adlehyde's better houses of ill repute, and the establishment happened to share a strong resemblance with the one he sought. The books were worth the trouble, though--they clearly indicated support for his bizarre “falling star” notion.

Human artefacts had not been found that could reliably be dated before approximately sixteen centuries ago, and seemed to spring up full-blown at a technological level not that much less than that observed at the beginning of the war. However, all of this was made more uncertain by the indubitable evidence of repeated magical upheavals strong enough to rearrange the planet's very geography, and by the slight and imperfect research that had been done. Still, when he went to sleep, he dreamt of stars and ships flying among them.

After the Gull Wing 6 took off, William had wasted no time in returning to those dreams despite his aunt's rather playful idea of piloting. Connie knelt on her seat, nose pressed against a window, grinning madly at the land laid out below like the world's biggest dollhouse setting. The elder Mr. Valeria seemed to be having a worse time of it--he gripped the arms of his seat tightly. His face was pale against his dark hair and moustache, and he had gone to worship Schturdark in his minor aspect of Guardian of Water Closets at least twice. What seemed to Connie like an impossibly short time later, the flying machine slowed to a hover and descended on its fans alone--well away from any of the cattle or horses. As amused as Emma had been by the chaos her first landing there had caused, she didn't want to repeat it.

Connie bounded out of the vehicle, William wandered out stretching, and Hector, after swallowing hard, answered an inaudible query from the cockpit with “Yes, I'll send a wireless when I need to go back...”, then staggered off in the same direction. The craft lifted off with a scream of fans, and zoomed into the distance. Hector had composed himself by the time they reached the ranch office, and asked the “children” to stay outside when he went in. Under the late-summer sun, William was grateful for his straw hat--until Connie deftly snatched it off his head and dropped it on her own. He mooched off in search of shade--there was one lonely tree halfway between the office and a stable.

As he approached, he saw that its shade was already occupied. Someone--a square-shouldered, rather nicely-shaped woman, he noticed with a slight blush--in cowboy's clothes was leaning against it, smoking a truly foul-smelling cigarette as if it had personally offended her. She looked him up and down skeptically. “You his son?”

“Er...yes. How'd you know?” William didn't look much like his father--if there was anyone in the family he resembled, it was his grandfather Hetfield.

“Making you wait outside like that. He's wasting his time in there, tho'.”

William blinked, and tilted his head to the side. “What...how is he..?”

“They don't know half of what happened.”

William looked even more perplexed. “Why don't they?”

“I didn't tell them. I'm the one who came back, see?”

He thought over what his father had said. A big herd had set out for Centaur--too big for the five hands that went with it, really. The town hadn't seen cow one, and the newest hire had come back alone, saying one of the other cowboys had lost his mind after a skirmish with bandits and shot the rest. What details was the hard-bitten woman holding back? Dangling secrets in front of William was like teasing a cat with a whole, fresh fish. “What did happen?”, he asked, suddenly fascinated.

The woman's eyes narrowed, and she blew out a long stream of smoke. “Heh. You'd think I'd gone as nuts as Alan, same as they would.”

Young Valeria's face went from mere curiosity to desperation. “Who? Please, I'll listen...”

His plea was cut off by a sudden disturbance--a small hand reached out of seemingly nowhere, grabbed the cowgirl's cigarette, and carried it to Connie's mouth. She took a very brief pull, spat the smoke out with a disgusted face, and attempted to return the thing where she'd got it--only to find a strong hand around her wrist, lifting her right off the ground until the taller woman could look her in the eye, with a distinct impression of “what is this?” Then the woman dropped Connie back on her feet, retrieving her smoke with a motion seemingly designed to say “I'm faster too.” William grimaced, and rubbed his temples. Congratulations, Connie, he thought, you just ruined my chance of finding out.

But...something that was almost a smile came across the weary face under the woman's hat. “Fine, you win. You're loco enough to travel with that kid, you'll believe anything. But keep Miss Monkey under control, OK?” Connie darted behind William and stuck out her tongue--then returned the hat to his head.

She launched into a strange story about riding with the Migrant King unawares, his strange silver wound, and the blazing outpouring of memories that followed it. Then, a slaughter that he doubtless intended as only the beginning of a long and bloody road. William staggered back, only his staff saving him from an undignified fall. Another legend...and this one very much alive, and turned to carnage. Then another thought succeeded this, and he uttered a single word. “Holmcross.” The hero of all Wanderers quite possibly had the power to wipe the human presence from Filgaia. The woman with sabre and lariat repeated the word, uncomprehending. He explained as best he could. “A weapon of the First Demon War. A metal man in the form of a human, created in imitation of the demons, possessed of a preternatural ability with ARMs. All but one were supposed to be destroyed, as they couldn't keep their violence to their enemies alone. That one became one of the heroes of fifteen years ago, but it sounds like there's another. He didn't share the others' bloodthirst then, but he seems...to want to make up for lost time.” Connie let out a low whistle--the larger woman simply stared. Then she returned to her previous surly expression.

“Somebody's got to stop him, sure. But right now, I just want to make it out of here without getting strung up for what he did. The only reason I'm still walking around here free is they don't think a girl who can't use ARMs could take out four cowhands...oh yeah, and a cook...without a scratch.”

William sighed with relief. At least the next news he had to deliver was good. “You're

home free. Aunt Emma's flying out to find the place where it happened. Even if the bodies are gone, she'll be able to spot the traces of ARMs fire.”

The cowpoke allowed herself a half-smile. “Aunt Emma? This Emma Hetfield as in the ARMs?”

William nodded. “She made this one.” He thumbed the release on his staff, letting the bow snap into position.

The smile got a little more pronounced. “A Hetfield ARM, and you'll listen. Maybe you're some good after all, Mister Valeria.”

“Call me William,” he responded.

The tall woman extended a gloved hand. “And you can call me Anne. Anne Hardin. Who's the kid?” William shook, managing not to wince at her grip.

“Connie Flynn,” he and the young thief answered simultaneously. William sank into thought again. A whole village was a big job, even if there was a team there already. And someone as strong as Anne could be a big help...”You want a job?”

Anne looked around the ranch compound. “Got one, but what're you offering?”

“In case it's not evidently obvious, I'm a researcher. From here, I'm heading up to a dig at an Elw village they've just found in the mountains. I was wondering if you could help me on that. Three meals and five hundred gella per diem.”

Anne considered this for a moment. “Sounds better than tramping all over the plains trying to find every cow that doesn't already have a new brand or monster's toothmarks on it. I'm in.”

Connie piped up just then. “Sucker. You shoulda held out for a percentage. Treeeeeeasure.”

Anne shrugged. “Honest wage and a decent boss sounds good enough to me. But, Boss?”

“Yes? And I meant it when I said you could call me William.”

“You might want to put that thing away before they start wondering what you're aiming to shoot.” William pushed the catch again, and refolded the bow with a pull of a lever. Anne jingled off towards the office to announce her change of career.

Connie looked up at the scholar, amused. “We're gonna get in soooo much trouble.” “What?” “Three heroes, heading off on an adventure. Just warnin' you.”

Elsewhere, two other heroes of far more established standing scanned the scrubby plains outside a tent city by the sea, looking for very specific trouble. Rudy Roughnight looked much the same as he had during the Second Demon War--perhaps two years older, certainly not fifteen, no bandage on his face for once, but still young and eager, short sword at his side and large-calibre revolving carbine ARM on his back. Jane Maxwell...looked even better. She had grown into a truly stunning woman, although the dusting of freckles on her cheeks and the wavy blonde hair still tied up in a blue ribbon made her look younger than her twenty-nine years. At some point, she had traded the orange dress she had fought in as a youth for a more protective but equally eye-catching set of close-fitting black leathers, but “Calamity” still kept her compact revolver ARM hidden in a large bow tied in a broad orange lace ribbon that served as a belt. They'd hired on to defend the camp at the western end of Gil-Galad Railways' first undersea tunnel project from monster attacks that had become bizarrely frequent. The plot had thickened when it had come to light that shipping magnate Eric Cook had a hunting lodge suspiciously close to that last link in an Adlehyde-Arctica rail route, and practically congealed when the digging machines turned up an incredible abundance of Metal-Dragon fossils--enough to keep the railroad in magically efficient steam engines for the next fifty years, or to make a miner rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

Rudy fiddled idly with the radar device in his hands. If the modifications Gil-Galad's ARMsmeisters had made worked, it would track the monsters back to their source, and prove Cook's interference--if the twisted creatures ever showed up. Jane reached a hand over and ruffled his blue hair. “Kiddo, I'm about to start shooting at bushes myself, but staring at it won't make them come any faster.” The ever-young adventurer smiled and relaxed, leaning into the scratch in a way Jane always found hilariously canine. Then he sprang back to alertness. Four red dots had appeared on the screen, leaving fainter but unfading trails as expected. His partner saw at the same time, drawing her brass-coloured pistol and breaking into the vicious grin that had helped give her her reputation as one of the most dangerous Wanderers of the age. “Whoo! Time to dance, Mr. Cook!” Rudy pulled his own from his back and cocked the hammer.

His other hand reached for Jane's free one, and squeezed it hard as a segmented vambrace of dull metal expanded from his wrist to cover it. “Let's go,” he said in the soft voice that people sometimes derided as a mumble--but never in Jane's earshot.

The pair ran swiftly over the hard ground, and soon encountered the monsters--two twin-tailed wolf-sized felines, running on their front paws alone, and two things that looked like an aborted attempt to make a dragon out of a chicken. For all their apparent absurdity, the cockatrices were by far the more dangerous, and the Wanderers knew it--as soon as they came into range, Jane emptied her cylinder into them, almost too fast to be credited for a revolver. One of the scaled and feathered beasts fell beneath the white-glowing rounds, unclean energies pouring away as it reverted to a very dead rooster. The other lost a wing and stumbled from a leg wound, but it fixed Maxwell with a baleful stare, eyes beginning to glow, dust swirling around it as its magic prepared to leap out as a petrifying beam. It never got the chance to loose the beam, though--there was a resounding boom, and it flew apart into red mist and feathers as Rudy's explosive shell, enhanced by his ARM's alchemy, found its mark.

Jane swung out her ARM's cylinder, letting the spent cartridges drop into her other hand as fresh ones, glowing white, flew from a pouch on her leg and into place of their own accord. She snapped it shut and squeezed off a shot at one of the cats as she returned the brass cases, powder spent but arcane mechanisms intact, to her other leg pouch for later reloading. Her shot and Rudy's next struck at the same time, and Rudy winced as the beast's enchantment streamed away to leave the mangled remains of a desert cat. He'd always liked cats. This didn't stop him running in towards the last beast, blade drawn in his left hand, and cutting loose with a wild slash, although it went high as he rolled away from a vicious kick of its rear claws, severing one tail instead of inflicting a critical wound. In the next moment, Jane shot away the other, and the creature dropped to all fours and galloped back the way it came. Rudy sheathed the weapon and produced the radar from inside his vest, then started running after, looking back and forth between beast and screen. Jane had always been faster than he was, and she caught up with him easily, then slackened her pace to match. “Looks like we didn't need that gizmo after all, huh?” Rudy was clearly thinking something else, though. “They didn't stay monsters,” he murmured. “They must be really new.”

As the trail the ancient machine provided was quite clear, Rudy, seeing the monster's growing pain, beheaded it with another shot as they crested the next hill. The lines of light led exactly where they expected, and Rudy's deduction proved correct; power still sparkled in the air around Eric Cook himself, in the centre of an elaborate magic circle drawn on the ground. Outside the circle, there were filthy pens containing various animals--chickens, desert cats, dogs, lizards in a glass tank, and one bull. Jane wasted no time in pointing both her ARM and a finger at the businessman--who was, incongrously for the rustic setting, wearing a bright blue suit of the latest cut--and making her accusation. “Gotcha! You want to come quietly, Cook, or you want to make this fun?” Rudy was more thoughtful, and he turned to her with a concerned look. “They said he was bad at magic--that we should expect to find a sorcerer here with him.”

Cook looked up at his vistors, and smiled. “Found me out, you have. Caught me, you haven't. Do you really think I wouldn't shield my circle? And with this--” He reached down to the ground and picked up a long fragment of metal the same colour as Rudy's wristguard--”you mercs mean less to me than a couple Wind Mice!” Blue power began to surround the metal piece and flow into the amateur magician as he began another spell. The two Wanderers took aim and fired--only to find that, as promised, the circle was well-warded indeed, Rudy's round exploding harmlessly against the barrier and Jane's bouncing off to down an unlucky chicken. Cook continued chanting, with many hesitations that bore out what the railroad representatives had said about his skill, and power began to loop out of the circle and form a corona around the bull, who lowed confusedly. Then the pair's attention was drawn by another figure--a tall, thin man who had appeared on the roof of the lodge.

He seemed to be holding a long sword, though it was hard to see with the sun to his back. A red aura began to surround the sword, forming a larger blade around it, outshining even the sunlight. Rudy was barely aware of drawing his own--a similar, though much dimmer glow grew from it as well as he synchronised his mind with its workings. There was a tension-filled pause as he and Jane took their best aim at the new figure, minds falling into the harmony of Force. Cook remained oblivious, absorbed in his spell. Then the figure streaked down from the roof with a roar of rockets, fast enough that he seemed to have vanished--until the barrier around Eric Cook splintered with a scream of protesting magics, and the light which had destroyed it continued unslowed to slice through his body before disappearing, leaving afterimages in Jane's eyes if not Rudy's superior metal ones. The tall man snatched the metal fragment before it hit the ground, and his voice rang out, calm and modulated despite its loudness. “I'll take that.”

Cook's killer...looked like Rudy. There was no other way to express it. His hair was lighter, but clearly a different shade of the same metallic blue. He had the same warm brown eyes, though the reddish hint in them seemed far more pronounced thanks to their malicious expression. They lay in a face that could have been that of an older brother, indefinably full-grown instead of youthful. Though he was a good foot taller, he had the same rangy build. The resemblance didn't seem to escape the mirthlessly-smiling murderer either. “Yo, brother,” he said. “I saved you a little trouble, eh?”

Rudy stumbled backwards. “Brother? You can't...oh, no...” If Jane heard this quiet response, she showed no sign, shouting her own answer. “We weren't going to kill him! I was aiming for his shoulder!”

The other Holmcross waved this away, looking at Jane as if he'd found a cockroach in his boot. “Die now, die later...his turn just came early.” Jane's response was succinct. “Bull!” She leveled her pistol, and let fly all her remaining shots. With a speed that defied belief, the tall Holmcross traced a figure with his sword that intercepted all of them. At the same time, he pointed the heel of the other hand, the one holding the odd metal, at her. His hand and forearm began to flow and change, under them forming a menacingly recognisable shape...

Then, Rudy shouted. “Jaaaaane!” He sprang forward, the Force that united his mind and body focusing to form a targeting reticle behind his eyes as the gun formed from his opponent's metal flesh. Two muzzle-flashes erupted...accompanied by a midair explosion as the two rounds intersected. A fragment drew a red-and-silver line across his cheek as he closed the distance, sword-ARM flaring to near the brightness its larger counterpart had shown earlier, but he didn't even seem to notice. The metal men's swords collided in a burst of red light--the tall one parried lightly, while Rudy threw his whole body behind each blow, as if he intended to club his opponent to the ground if he could not cut him. Then he found himself staring into the bore of the same adapted ARM that had almost felled Jane, close enough to see that it was a fully automatic weapon. He might be able to stop one round, but not sixteen.

Jane hadn't been idle herself--she cut loose with her fully-reloaded weapon, desperately aiming at the device that had erupted from the tall man's arm the way Rudy's handguard sprang from his. Two shots went wide and struck the lodge, and one grazed the top of the killer's forearm, tracing a bloody line that disturbingly vanished almost as soon as it formed. The other five hit home, though, thoroughly ruining the ugly black weapon. Its wielder unconcernedly let it drop from him, pressing the attack against Rudy with his sword, driving him back with each ever-brighter blow. As unwieldy as it was in close quarters, Rudy tried to bring his own hand-cannon to bear, hoping to end it quickly with a shot under the enemy's jaw--but found his forearm caught with an iron three-fingered grip, the other two still gripping the metal fragment. Then a sparkling something passed into his body from the contact, and he fell to his knees gasping.

It was like pain in purified form--pure antagonism to his metal flesh, the spell-pure intent to overtake and destroy whatever was Holmcross. And it was spreading. The one who had delivered this malign payload stepped back, blade melting into him, and smiled nastily at his smaller counterpart. “Feel that, brother? It's what you were spared. The death of the Holmcross. Amazing, the nasty things they come up with in the name of peace. I was only spared by turning my soul to its purpose. And you can only survive by turning to mine. Quite a lucky break, you turning up where I happened to be going.”

Rudy met his “brother's” eyes, resolution and anger on his face. “Never,” he said, then his face was wracked by another wave of pain.

Heedless of her safety, Jane rushed to her partner's--her love's--side, drawing something from a pouch as she went. She struggled against her emotions to muster the calm of Force, and focused it all into the precious Holy Berry, the soothing green light of its patron Odoryuk surrounding the berry and her hand, then pouring into Rudy as she put it against his shoulder on the afflicted side. Relief flooded his face as the powerful magic eased his pain and halted the affliction's progress, but he could still feel it struggling to spread. Mind cleared by the relief, he could feel other things as well. The villain's baleful purpose, to destroy all the civilised creatures of Filgaia...and beneath it, the enchanted nano-virus's original purpose. “In the name of peace.” To erase living metal from Filgaia that desired war. But...he didn't. He loved Filgaia, and wished nothing more for it than peace! He bent his mind towards this thought, forcing it to override his disgust for the other Holmcross, and the blind rage that his attempt on Jane's life brought.

Gradually, he found his mind joining with the infection's own spirit, consumed with its single purpose...but, unlike his opponent had a millennium ago, he took it into mind, and said no. His desire for peace was his own--he forced the virus-spell smaller and ever smaller in his consciousness, and it weakened in his body, the healing power overtaking it and rendering it inert. It seemed, though, that the enemy retained a connection to it after it left his body--even before Rudy relaxed, his eyes opened wide as the last of the infection died. The Wanderer didn't stay relaxed for long--almost as soon as the Holy Berry's power finished its work, he brought up his ARM from the ground and flipped it open. Letting his sword lie on the ground, he jammed a special cartridge, complexly instrumented and open at the end, into the top chamber, and slid the barrel out along a hidden track as he closed the breech, leaving a wide space between it and the cylinder.

Jane saw what he was doing immediately, and pulled a small grey ARM, tipped with a crystal emitter, from a pocket of Rudy's vest. It was slightly shorter than the barrel alone of the hand-cannon, and she set it atop that barrel with the emitter towards Rudy, the front sight smoothly sliding into a slot in the smaller weapon. Rudy could feel the “soul” of the second ARM combine with the first, and the straps hanging beneath it, originally intended for a wrist mount, fastened themselves snugly around the barrel. He raised it towards his “brother”, blue light from his hand fading into the ARM's white glow--and both grew much stronger as Jane placed her hand on his, connecting through the ARM, the fervor of her soul blending with the hope that dominated his.

The tall Holmcross seemed transfixed with fascination at the whole proceeding, even when Rudy pulled the trigger. If one could see events quickly enough, one would see a ball of blue-white energy emerge from the usual flash of ARM-enhanced gunpowder flames, then a beam spring to being from the small ARM, taking a curved path to intersect the shot. From a normal perspective, in a flash, there was a mass of white energy in the space between cylinder and barrel, the beam still feeding into it, contained by segmented rings of warding at either end. Similar circles appeared in a ring surrounding the open part of the weapon, and power shot from them into the glowing stuff, which then erupted from the muzzle in a coruscating stream of blue power.

Finally, the target moved, raising his right hand as if he expected to catch the beam like a thrown ball. It met his hand with a brilliant flash that made it impossible to clearly see the impact--although the sparks and droplets of molten metal which spattered to the ground behind him told a story of their own. The energy stream only grew in power for as long as it poured forth, and finally, just before it was spent, its target was thrown from his feet and sent spinning to the ground, landing among small fires and melted remnants of himself. As Jane blinked the spots from her eyes, the figure improbably propped himself up on his good left elbow, the metal--the Guardian Blade shard, she had finally realised--still tightly gripped in that hand. His right arm was missing at an angle, from just below the elbow at the inside to just above at the outside. The wound was glowing orange, but rapidly cooling to red. Elsewhere, he showed small, rapidly closing burns from the flying slag. And he was still smiling. “They've done some new things with ARMs, haven't they? I'll have to look into it.”

Rudy and Jane stared at each other, then back at him. They'd melted his arm off, and he was acting like he'd won. As if he knew what they were thinking, the tall...thing, it was hard to think of him as a “man” after that...spoke again as he smoothly rose to his feet. “We're even for the assist now. I needed that off to make my Silver Hand.” He turned his back, and chuckled. “Poor pathetic Alan's a proper Holmcross after all. I always hated fighting, but when your turn comes, it'll be...fun.”