She nodded.
“Go to them,” I said. “Tell them what I told you. Tell them I said we’re sorry about what happened, but this is on Hekla.”
“She was protecting us,” Silfa said. “When she died, it automatically made Eva the party leader. People don’t like her. They’re leaving the party. Brynhild’s Daughters is no more. We’re nothing without Hekla. We have hardly any equipment. We don’t have a personal space anymore. We all have sponsors, but most of us have the same one as Hekla, the crab ranch, and they’ve never sent us anything. We have nothing. What are we going to do?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. There’s a whole train of people out there. I’m sure someone would love to join up with a healer and two mages. It won’t be us, though. We’ll never trust each other, and that sucks. It really does. It’s exactly what they want to happen, and it breaks my fucking heart.”
I opened the door just enough for the dejected fairy to slip out. I snapped it closed and locked it. On the other side of the door, I heard the three women start to sob.
I leaned my back against the door. The train shook violently as we hit something, but it soon settled. Christ, what a day. The more I thought about what Hekla had attempted, the more it angered me. Is this what we’ve become? Is this who we really are? I refused to believe it.
I thought of Bautista, who was still walking toward the abyss with a group of people who wouldn’t be able to get to a stairwell.
You can’t save them all.
Fuck you, Mordecai, I thought.
“How did you know?” Katia asked. “About Hekla?”
I shrugged. “I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting that sort of thing.” That wasn’t true at all. If Odette hadn’t warned me, I’d likely be dead right now. I sighed, looking at Hekla’s half corpse.
“It’s too bad about that crossbow,” I said.
“Oh, you mean this?” Katia asked, and the massive, repeating crossbow formed in her hands.
Holy shit. She’d done it. She’d looted one of the most powerful weapons in the game. My anger fled.
“Katia, I am going to kiss you.”
She laughed. She sounded just as exhausted as I felt. “Not without taking a shower first you’re not.”
“Can I see it?” I reverently took the weapon from Katia’s hands. When fired at full auto, I remembered thinking this thing was like a ranged chainsaw. It was lighter than I expected. It appeared to be made of gold, but it felt almost like plastic. It was inlaid with carvings of a vulture creature.
I received a nasty notification the moment I touched it.
Warning: You have a dick.
“Thank you for the information,” I said to the ceiling as I examined the weapon’s properties.
Enchanted Repeating Crossbow of the Scavenger Mother of Mothers
This is a unique item.
This is a repeating, ranged weapon. It has the buffet enchantment, meaning it will not run out of basic ammunition. You may load and fire additional ammunition types to use with this weapon, though any special bonuses will only apply to the stock ammunition.
It is said that the long-forgotten goddess Nekhebit is both jealous and terrible. When the elf mothers chose to abandon Nekhebit and instead worship Apito, the Oak Goddess, it is written Nekhebit grew enraged. The mighty vulture goddess blamed the male-dominated high elf court for causing her worshippers to stray. As a result, she cursed their seed, thus creating what is today known as the Fae Diaspora. There are dozens of elf and fairy breeds, all of whom may trace their lineage back to the early high elf court, whose cursed offspring sowed the universe.
This crossbow is rumored to have been given to Nekhebit’s last warrior guardian as a gift for remaining true to her faith.
This item may only be wielded by a female.
For every female in your party, up to thirty, this item’s damage and firing speed is increased by 25 percent.
Your strength+level increases base damage 1.5X more than a standard crossbow.
+15 Dexterity when wielded
+10 Strength when wielded
Casts Birth Defect on monster types who generate or birth additional monsters.
“Wow,” I said. It wouldn’t be as powerful or fast in Katia’s hands as it was in Hekla’s, but I was already thinking of ways to maximize the unique weapon’s strength. No wonder she had surrounded herself with women.
“It’s good to see you,” I said to Li Jun. The Street Monk clapped me on the shoulder.
He looked distastefully at his hand, which was now covered in blood. “You too, Carl and Donut. You’re a little, uh, dirty,” he said.
I laughed.
After we’d freed Silfa, we’d decided it was best to keep the door closed just to head off any further misunderstandings. I moved Katia to the small Engineer’s apartment so she could rest for about a half hour. The room had a bed, a table, and a long, thin toilet designed to be used by a mantaur. Heavy metal posters from earth covered the walls. I went through and looted everything not bolted down before I returned to the main room of the engine car.
A few minutes later came a knock, and Li Jun’s familiar, halting voice wafted through the door. I quickly let him in, though he stopped dead at the sight of the gore in the train car. Most of the liquid had drained away, leaving piles of body parts and bones throughout. Donut had let Mongo out for about thirty seconds before I made her put him away again. The dinosaur had gone crazy, like that fat kid in the Willy Wonka book who started eating the walls and shit.
Li Jun looked sick to his stomach as he took in the room, but he quickly recovered and grinned widely up at me.
I examined the man. The last time I’d spoken to him was on the Maestro’s show. He remained human. He was a level 28 Street Monk, which I assumed was some sort of melee class. He didn’t carry any weapons. He didn’t look much different than before. The Chinese man had deep acne scars on his cheeks that hadn’t gone away with the transformation, but when he smiled, it lit up the room, despite the gory surroundings. He’d been on the top 10 list, but he’d fallen off. I was glad to see he was still alive.
“Your sister? Zhang?” I asked, suddenly concerned that he was here alone.
“They are fine,” he said. “They are in the cargo near the front, and we can’t get to each other until the train stops. We have a group of twelve people now. We have been saved, again, by you. I have come to pay my respects.”
I nodded. We fist bumped so I’d have him in my chat.
“Now that you’re here, I need to show you how to drive this train,” I said. “We’re going to stop at station 75 and detach this car from the rest. From there, you can drive the train back to station 36. Get the people off there. I already have a few friends waiting. That’s where we’re going to make the stand. Station 36.”
Imani and crew were already dealing with an increasing wave of these wrath ghouls—which I hadn’t seen yet. The station, unfortunately, had multiple platforms attached to it. The ghouls were coming from almost every one, making it difficult to defend. But with these reinforcements, Imani’s plan of keeping the ghouls from transforming further might just work. Especially since we had several nearby stations with saferooms where people could rest and recharge in shifts. There were no ghouls in the “hidden” railway where we had the Nightmare parked, so people had easy access to the rest areas.
I told all of this to Li Jun, who nodded thoughtfully.
“The monsters will likely come at us from all sides just before the stairs open, even if we do prevent the wrath ghouls from forming a boss monster,” he said.