James A. Hunter
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Wasteland Warlords Episode 3: Chapter 7 - The Wyrd, Wyrd West
🕑 Added 2022-11-25 18:00:08 +0000 UTCClay cussed under his breath. So much for being fast enough.
On his heels, dozens of ecstatic spider voices shouted over one another.
“I can’t believe I finally get to taste human flesh! They say it’s the tenderest meat.”
“I call the intestines!”
“Dibs on the gonads!”
He glanced at the grating between his feet at the oncoming horde on the fire escape below. Those spider demons were pretty small, and with their fragile-looking bodies, there was no way they could hit too hard. He didn’t need to stop them forever—he just needed to stall them for long enough to make it to the giant pineapple above.
Calling up the simple Shield of Warding spell he’d learned before leaving the Sooq, Clay thrust his hand down, palm out, and cast the spell. A shimmering blue shield, five feet wide and five feet tall hung in the air like a giant manhole cover, completely blocking the fire escape. There was no way past, which meant if they wanted to get a taste, they’d have to burrow their way through his conjured shield.
The excited screaming turned into cries of frustration as the swarm of demonic bodies slammed against the conjured barrier. Their legs jabbed at the magical shield and their fangs fruitlessly lashed out, dealing a point or two of damage at a time. Luckily, they weren’t even close to taking the shield out.
Clay’s knees went weak and darkness tried to edge out his vision as the spell ate through his Magicka, but he caught hold of the railing and hauled himself back to his feet. A demon-infested former dispensary in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard was no place to pass out—not if he wanted to keep his nads.
The screaming demons quieted behind him as he topped the last level of the fire escape and hauled himself onto the rooftop. The giant metal pineapple loomed overhead.
Clay snagged a stamina potion from a drop pouch, downed it, and tossed the bottle over his shoulder as a rush of energy that beat any caffeine pill or energy drink on the planet surged through his system.
“Hey, that’s littering!” a matronly voice snarled.
A hulking black widow trundled out from behind the pineapple, her bulbous thorax swaying as she moved.
“Pick up your trash this instant, young man,” she snapped. “Were you born in a junkyard?”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Clay said, hoping he sounded more apologetic than shit-himself-terrified. “I’ll get it picked up right away… if you promise not to kill me?”
Dozens of glowing red eyes narrowed.
“Why would I promise not to kill a human if I don’t know whether he’s here to kill me? Especially a litterbug.”
She planted her spidery forelimbs on her hips, waiting expectantly for an answer.
Sensing his time was running out, Clay hurried to explain.
“I’m not here to hurt you. See, I’m actually here to shoot down the spike on that building over there,” he admitted, pointing to Capitol Records. “I couldn’t get a decent angle on it from the ground. The top of your pineapple is just high enough that I should be able to take it out—if you let me up there, that is. I didn’t plan on killing anybody to get the shot, though.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Check the little facehuggers below, if you don’t believe me. I didn’t touch them, just stopped them from chasing me.”
He let the shield fall, and the little spiderlings raced up onto the rooftop—and skidded to a stop.
“It’s Mom,” the whisper traveled from the front line backward through their ranks. “Play it cool.”
The black widow let out an annoyed sigh. “You say you’re going to shoot down Nat’s Needle?”
Praying it wasn’t the worst idea in the world to be honest right then, Clay nodded.
“Good,” the black widow said. “That jackass ape’s been lording it over me for years how much taller his dungeon is than mine. If you take out the needle, the Pineapple Palace will finally be the same height as Capitol Records, and he can suck it. Not to mention his nightly broadcast won’t blare across the neighborhood every evening when millions of good little spiderlings are trying to sleep.”
Clay let out a rush of relieved breath. “Thank you for understanding.”
“Do you need a ride to the top?” the giant spider asked, reverting to a motherly tone. “It’s not an easy climb, even for one of my little ones, and I’d hate to see you slip before you’ve shot the needle down.”
“Uh, sure, that would be great.”
She squatted down, swollen abdomen flattening against the ground like a bagful of snot.
Trying not to show how grossed out he was, Clay clambered onto her back and held on. The ease of the trip up the side was well worth the sharp, scratchy hairs stabbing at his arms and legs and the skittering sounds that he would probably be hearing in his nightmares for the rest of his life.
At the top, he climbed off and studied his target. According to the wording of the quest, he didn’t need the whole spike, just the top part, but his mama hadn’t raised him to ignore a lady’s request—especially not one coming from a lady who could wrap him up in webbing and feed him to her babies, nads, intestines, and all.
Raising the Wand of Lesser Inferno, he aimed at the base of the needle and fired off the first Inferno Lance of the day. It would’ve been an impossible shot if not for the fact that the wand relied on Dexterity for its accuracy, and he had a lot of Dexterity to go around. The first shot rocked the whole building. With a scream of metal, the needle lurched to the side. On the rooftop, a stunned Nat King Kong and his birdman groupies fell silent.
Clay took a deep breath and forced himself to focus. This was the part where he had to get it exactly right. One big, visibly traceable shot like that was a surprise, two gave your enemy a direction to look in, and the third told them your location.
He aimed for the ripped and scorched metal at the bottom of the leaning spike and fired again.
The Inferno Lance tore through the last shreds of the needle. The gorilla’s mic went hot with feedback, then cut off. With a groan like a dying giant, the needle tumbled off the roof and crashed to the street below, slamming into the already broken asphalt like an asteroid.
“Over there!” a birdman squawked. “It’s coming from Priscilla’s Pineapple Palace!”
Okay, so maybe that three-shot rule of thumb only applied to humans.
“You’re damn right it did, bucko,” the black widow yelled, shaking her forelimbs. “Come get some if you’ve got the guts!”
Birdmen leapt off Capitol Records and shot toward the Pineapple Palace in a cawing, flapping cloud. The massive gorilla threw down his microphone and swung off the side of the tower, crashing down into the parking lot.
“Battle stations, my children!” the black widow cried. “Abaddon through Azerath cover the street! Bartholomew through Candi, aerial defense! Chelle through Damian, flight patterns!”
In answer, countless little spider demons poured out of the Pineapple Palace’s windows. They flooded the street, crisscrossing it with webs, and covered the tops of nearby buildings like living paint, shooting web attacks at the oncoming birds.
Clay searched the area below Capitol Records for his family and friends, but couldn’t see them. Either Diebolt had put up another illusion to keep them safe or they had moved out of the vicinity when things got dicey.
The black widow jabbed a forelimb at the rampaging Kong blasting his way through the sticky webbing on the street. “Thicker, Asmodius, lay your traps thicker! This is no time for laziness! When I was your age, we spun our webs twice that strength every time!”
Clay cleared his throat awkwardly. “Well, I’m going to hit the road.”
“Yes, yes, you know the way out,” she said absently, waving a giant, multi-segmented leg toward the ground. “Casen, look where you’re aiming! If I have to come down there… Where in the world are Chelle through Damian?”
“We’re over here!” a host of voices buzzed. It was the group of spiders that had been chasing him up the side of the dispencary. They were still in hot pursuit, beady, arachnoid eyes locked on Clay.
“Now is not the time to be chasing humans, you lot!” huffed the black widow. “Can’t you see there’s a war on? I’ll let you eat after we deal Nat and his insufferable birdmen.”
“But mother,” one of them mewled like a petulant toddler, “what about the intestines?”
“We have more than enough liquified intestines stored inside. Now hop to it, those birdmen aren’t going to kill themselves!” The spider queen rolled dozens of glowing red eyes, then leaned over toward Clay. “It’s always something with that letter group. Now go, before I change my mind…”
Clay didn’t need to be told twice. He gave her another brief “thank you, ma’am,” then turned and scaled his way down the pineapple.
Meanwhile, the C through D spider demons rushed past him to the edge of the roof. Each one wove little silken balloons and hurled them into the air. When the wind caught their chutes, they sailed toward the birdmen like eight-legged paratroopers.
One spiderling tried to take a bite out of Clay as it passed, but he kicked it aside. It got up and scrambled after him, but a sharp shout stopped it in its tracks.
“Connie, if I have to tell you again, I am not going to be happy!”
Chastened, the spiderling scuttled away to do its mama’s bidding.
On the street below, Clay dodged the weirdest warzone he’d ever been in. Squawking birdmen tumbled out of the sky, tangled in sticky nets or overrun with spiderling paratroopers. Spider demons blasted up web barricades thick enough to block out the last of the sunlight, while a behemoth gorilla threw smashed cars, chunks of concrete, and whatever he could grab through the sticky mesh. Clay had to roll out of the way as a gigantic distillery barrel went flying past. God knew where Kong had gotten that.
The thickest of the fighting made the street just in front of the Capital Records Building impassable, but Clay booked it around the back, where the needle had fallen. There were no angry gorillas, birdmen, or gung-ho spiderlings back there, just the twisted wreck of metal that had once sat on top of the tower.
A throaty chuckle rose from a pile of rubble. The stone shimmered, then disappeared, revealing Diebolt and the Jaeger squad.
“Are you all right, babe?” Alex hopped out of the dune buggy and checked him over. “Do you need a healing potion?”
“I’m fine,” Clay wheezed.
Diebolt wiped his bulbous eyes. “That’ll teach them.” He chuckled some more. “They think they can tell every mob in Hollywood what to do just because the Warlord let them keep their dungeons, but that doesn’t make them the king and spiderqueen of the world.” He grinned at Clay. “What I’m really interested to see now is how you plan to make that egg stand on its end on the tip of the spike when the spike’s lying on its side in the street.”
“Like this.” Clay pulled the hardboiled phoenix egg out of his backpack and jammed it, point-first, onto the needle’s tip. The shell crunched and the spike sank into the meat of the egg. When he let go, the egg stayed impaled on the point of the needle as if it were balancing on its end.
Diebolt clapped, laughing harder. “And here I thought I was going to Kobayashi Maru you! Well done, Clay Jaeger, you have completed your second moderately difficult but not impossible labor. And you entertained me in the process. Oh yes, yes you did. And now for your boon!”
With a flourish, he presented an ancient-looking revolver holstered in an equally beat-up leather cartridge belt lined with thirty ammo slides, each one holding an etched silver bullet.
Clay put on the Monocle of Trueseeing as he accepted the weapon.
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Wyrd West Quickdraw Weapon Set (Unique)
Pieces Acquired: 3/3
+6% Dexterity
+6% Intelligence
+39% Wyrd Damage to Voodoo-Aligned Creatures
+39% Voodoo Spell Resistance
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The Ace of Spades
Wyrd West Double-Action Revolver (Unique)
One-Shot Damage: 30 - 39
Durability: 113 of 113
Tier Requirement: 1
Dexterity Requirement: 13
Gun Class Weapon - Fast Attack Speed
+25 Points of Wyrd Damage
+13% Boost to Firing Speed
+13% Voodoo Spell Resistance
+13% Wyrd Damage to Voodoo-Aligned Creatures
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Wyrd West High Speed Low Drag Cartridge Belt (Unique)
Armor Rating: 13
+13% Boost to Quickdraw Speed
+13% Boost to Reload Speed
+13% Voodoo Spell Resistance
+13% Wyrd Damage to Voodoo-Aligned Creatures
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Wyrd West Tattooed Silver Bullets (Unique)
+13% Bleeding Damage
+13% Voodoo Spell Resistance
+13% Wyrd Damage to Voodoo-Aligned Creatures
+13% Chance of Inflicting an instance of Rot on target (Stackable)
Silver Bullets Regenerate at a Rate of +2 / Hour.
╠═╦╬╧╪
Clay whistled. The revolver alone packed a helluva punch, but altogether, the pistol, bullets, and belt would give them a serious leg up over the Haunt Topic lizardman.
“Phwew!” Joe slapped Clay on the shoulder. “Oh buddy, I didn’t know how you were gonna manage that one. That difficulty level really jumped up, huh?”
Clay grunted. “That’s for damn sure, but this Quickdraw set was worth the risk. Look at this. Plus thirty-nine percent additional damage against voodoo creatures, and minus thirty-nine percent damage from voodoo spells.”
“That douchebag lizardman won’t know what hit him,” Alex said, leaning over his shoulder to inspect the set.
“And seeing those bullies fighting each other was worth a little something, too,” Diebolt said. “A win-win-win situation for us all, you might say.”
“Given the difficulty of the last labor, I almost hate to ask,” Griff drawled, turning a wary eye on Diebolt, “But what’s he got to do next?”
Clay was dreading the answer to that question, even with his new gear in hand…
***
One dune buggy ride later, they were standing behind Diebolt’s giant letter home, the sun setting on the horizon. There was a small garden back there, with a tree growing next to it.
“Behold!” the frogman intoned, raising his arms. “The final labor of Clay Jaeger.” Diebolt reached into his robes and pulled out a fish. “You must… cut down that tree with this herring!”
He slapped the fish into the palm of Clay’s hand.
“Are you kidding me?” Alex stared down at the herring. “You want him to cut down a tree with a fish?”
Joe threw back his head and laughed. “I get it! Frickin’ hilarious, man,” he said, popping Diebolt on the shoulder. “I love Monty Python, but these guys aren’t as big twentieth century fans as I am. Not really in the know like you and me, you know?”
“It’s just a joke,” Diebolt explained, taking the fish back and shoving it into his robes again. “I promised only moderately difficult but not impossible labors, and this one is an impossible labor from an ancient classic of a movie.”
Clay wiped the fish slime onto his pants. “So, if this isn’t my last labor, what is?”
From a different pocket on his robe, Diebolt pulled out a round blue Squishy toy. “I have all of the TTIGRAS Squishies but one: Veldora Tempest. Did you happen to see one when you were in that Haunt Topic?”
“Uh…” Clay didn’t see where this was going. He racked his brain, but couldn’t remember. “I’m not sure. Guys? Any help here?”
“There were Squishies,” Alex confirmed with a nod. “I saw a Tomagoyama.”
“Wrong show,” Diebolt said. “But if they had any Squishies, then they had TTIGRAS ones somewhere. Those were their best sellers.” Turning back to Clay, he said, “Your final labor, Clay Jaeger, will sort of operate on credit. I’ll give you the Nega-Voodoo Rune, but in return, you have to bring me a Veldora Tempest Squishy from the Hot Topic.”
“What if they don’t have that specific one?” Clay asked, brow furrowing in concern.
The frogman thought about it for a second, then shrugged. “Eh, then grab me another Rimaru or Shion. Oh, or Gabiru-sama.” He switched back to his official quest-giver voice. “Do you choose to accept this labor, Clay Jaeger?”
Clay nodded and stuck out his hand to shake on it. “I’ll get it done.”
“So shall it be,” Diebolt said, his slimy fingers encompassing Clay’s. The frogman squeezed his bulbous eyes closed and boomed in a grandiose voice, “I grant thee… the Wyrd West Nega-Voodoo Rune… on credit!”
Icy heat crawled up Clay’s arm, across his shoulders, up his neck, then down his chest and opposite arm. A static buzz of power filled his upper body, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Deep green lights pulsed under his long sleeves and shined between the gaps in his body armor. The wind kicked up a whistling breeze, and a low, twanging guitar tune drifted in on it, as gritty and dry as the wasteland.
Joe was the first one to break the silence. “Dude. That was awesome.”
Clay peeled back his sleeve. Grinning up from his arm was a grayscale tattoo sleeve of a skeleton dressed like a wild west gambler, smoking a cigar and fanning out a dead man’s hand in one bony fist. The tattoos didn’t stop at his shoulder, either. They covered his chest, climbed up his neck, and wrapped around his other arm, too. There were scenes of ghostly Native Americans hunting buffalo across a wide open plain, steampunk Mormons guiding an iron horse across a vast prairie, a boothill of gunslinger graves.
“Those are sick as hell,” Alex said, tracing a finger over the ink on Clay’s throat. “And check out your stats.”
Clay put on the Monocle of Trueseeing and looked down at his hand.
╠═╦╬╧╪
Clay Jaeger
Level: 0
Race: Human
Class: Unassigned
Alignment: Neutral
Exp: 0 Exp; to next level: 440
Available Characteristic Points: 0
Health: 133/133
H-Regen / 5 Sec: 0
Magick: 371/371
Magick-Regen / 5 Sec: 0
Stats:
· Strength: 19 (17 + 2 item bonus)
· Constitution: 13 (12 + 1 item bonus)
· Dexterity: 26.5 (23 + 3.5 item bonus)
· Intelligence: 39.22 (37 + 2.22 item bonus)
Attributes:
· Armor Rating: 54
· Melee Attack Damage: 63
· Ranged Attack Damage: 110 (85 + 25 Wyrd Damage item bonus)
· Spell Damage: 150
· Movement Rate: +7.15%
· Critical Hit Chance: 10.15%
· Critical Hit Damage: +62.88%
Active Effects:
· +18% Fire Resistance
· +13% Quick Draw Speed, Reload Speed, and Firing Speed
· +39% Wyrd Damage to Voodoo-Aligned Creatures
· +39% Spell Resistance
Player Special Skills:
· Discordant Inversion Tribal Tattoos (Voodoo)
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“Does this mean we’re ready to save the bacon?” Joe asked, wiggling his eyebrows. “Bits? The Bacon Bits? Anybody?”
Alex rolled her eyes. “You ought to get a grammar violation for every pun you make.”
“Just for that I’m taking ten bonus points, and nobody can stop me.”
“You ornery pups ever get tired a’ bickering?” Griff asked wearily.
“Not really,” Joe said at the same time as Alex shrugged and said, “No.”
The old weed huffed. “Figured as much.”
Clay stowed the monocle.
“Cool it with the bacon puns,” he said, barely holding back the grin. “It’s time to go hog wild on a big bad Voodoo Daddy.”
Alex groaned. “Not you too.”
