And so it ends
The Traveller's eyes hardened at when he first saw Lari, doing his best to remain stoic, led out onto the mezzanine floor from somewhere behind the singular brutish Sentry Bot with it's menacing armaments; only to bulge at the sheer spectacle of his mangled hostage taker.
A lean, tall man- stretched some seven feet tall, with ugly and amateur cybernetic instalments, most clearly scavenged out of scrap piles, bulging out his face, chest and arms. He looked like a child's scribble of some strung-out Freeside vagrant, only with the algae and flesh-mutation replaced with blinking diodes and hanging rubber tubes. But he was also waifish and small framed, limping as he walked under the weight of several pounds of metal adornments that seemed ready to crumble into his own body at a moment's notice. He looked sad.
The Traveller whistled a low, soaring note, somewhere between an impressed and mocking sigh. "Phew, what happened to you?" Lari's façade slipped for a moment in alarm. He tried to catch the Traveller's attention and silently warn him, with slight head nods and pointed eyes, not to upset the unstable Amalgam. The Traveller caught his tiny flailing, and just winked.
The rubber flesh mask hanging off what should have been it's faced twitched involuntarily. "Not often you meet the product of intelligent evolution. Your type is easily amused."
" 'Intelligent evolution', is it? Someone's been reading 'Humanity Redefined'. " The Traveller callously scoffed.
The Alamgam's head jerked to stunned attention. "You've read Moreau's work?"
"And then some." The Travelled shot back. "Right eccentric old coot, wasn't he? And god did he love to waffle!"
"He was a visionary amidst cowards!" The creature spat.
"He was a dreamer." The Traveller affirmed. "Too far gone with the skylarks to see the world around him. Like you, I suspect. Pimped up as you with all of those...'upgrades' you've fit yourself with. That is your own work, isn't it? I hope no professional would sign off on a mess like that!"
Some alien rumble buzzed from within the Amalgam's body, like a fizzling and busted server box. None of his robotic retinue acted, but only because they stood on the moment of his order, with all civilian safety parameters now switched completely off. But still the cocksure gall of the man intrigued him. "Elaborate."
The Traveller half-shrugged with both hands in the air. "Well here you are, enthroned in your mountain of robot busybodies gussying yourself up like some sort of pseudo-robot hybrid deity; and recruiting bumpkins like me to do the legwork for you. Why? You forgot how to work a keyboard with those pincers of yours?" He nodded pointedly at the dangerously tipped finger blades delicately placed all around Lari's central organs. A single slip-up and the boy would have several new airholes.
Looking down on the insect-like man posturing with misplaced pride, the Amalgam's eye bristled with disgust. "I gave you the opportunity to be useful. To circumvent those sophisticated artificial detection protocols. I thought you worthy of earning your continued exsistence, I should have known better. Units-"
"But I did do it."
The Amalgam paused, uncharacteristically surprised. "You- you did?"
Taking the time to release the sudden intake of air he had just sucked in, the Traveller grinned. "I hacked through that little machine of yours, got into the military servers and took a quick glance at everything I could. Remember quite a bit of it too- before I torched the place."
"What!" The bulb of his red eye flared up like a siren.
"Oh yeah, lasers and overheated servers make for an explosive recipe, don't you know. Those servers are currently melting into scrap; even if you doused the whole place and rinsed, I doubt there's a single kilobyte of data left in that heap! All those records, gone up in a whiff of smoke. Well, except for the copy in my head, that is." The Traveller's eyes sharpened into daggers.
Too much had changed in his makeup for the Amalgam to be impressed by the manoeuvrings of an Organic, all that impressed him was how much of an unexpected nuisance this breed of man could be; even against his least flattering calculated expectations. "This is a bluff." But the Traveller was no bluffer.
"Solar power draws, mass energy convergence, a naturally manipulated superweapon; it all made for a very interesting read. If a bit derivative; wasn't one apocalypse enough for those Old World war mongers?"
If the robotic army tethered to the Amalgam's word could have breathed, that would have been the moment they collectively held in their breath. As it just so happens, Lari could not even confirm if the thing itself could breath, but few could mistake the shaken nature of it's sudden stillness.
The Traveller continued. "Of course it's no surprise, when you go about dangling that shiny robot stick above our heads it's only human nature to go looking for a bigger one; stick envy and all that. You understand that, right? 'Course you do; envy is what brought you here, wasn't it? And, fate willing, envy will take you elsewhere, to your prize, away from me and the boy, pristine as how you found us. Now how does that sound?"
A quiet burst of steam, like a small ruptured valve, shoot from somewhere underneath the creature's drawn shirt; and when it spoke it did so with the duelling timbre of three distinct voices. "You will give us the location of the weapon, Organic. Now!"
"As much as I simply adore the idea of surrendering my only bargaining chip to the mercy of a megalomaniacal meat popsicle like yourself, I've had a taste of the way you play your hand and I have to say, I'm no fan." His wry smile slipped into all-business. "Now it's my turn to deal you in. The hand is this: you're going to leave Lari and this base behind as you, me, and as many of your metal band as you can carry, go walking up that mountain side. Then you're going send your groupies down the otherside of the mountain, don't worry you'll be catching up to them, because once they're good and over the horizon, I will provide the exact coordinates of the test-site your weapon was set-up in. It's a long walk, you're going to want to get started soon. "
A wave of anticipation swept over the dingy blown-out lobby as the Traveller's ultimatum sank into the brickwork. Behind the scenes, one of the Amalgam's Protectron units that was silently ordered off it's routine, had waddled to the server room and confirmed the worst. Total carnage, servers burnt to a crisp. The Traveller had, well and truly, turned himself into an indispensable asset.
Then a sound cracked from within the Amalgam, like the choking rasp of a sleeper shaken by the throat, built and grew more distinct. As it got louder, the sound became clearer. Cackling, painful sounding and distorted by an unfit voice modulator. The Machine-man was laughing at the Traveller.
"You think highly of yourself, don't you?" It jeered. "But like every organic, your perception is imperfect. Flawed- fatally flawed. You've put your head up as collateral before fully recognising everything that I am, haven't you? Let me enlighten you.
I am made of a dead organic vessel, powered by hand-made cybernetics housed by a complex routine of custom parts and processors that transferred all the functions of my once living flesh into my newer, unforgetting, mechanical mind. My life was defined my mastering how to pull and interpret organic stimuli into hard data for my current body to read, you really think I can't drag your secrets out of your cold, dead skull? I would delight in it. It would be easy!
Lower laser yield and forgo plasma weapons! We'll need his body mostly intact if I'm going to be spending the evening probing it. Engage!"
Dozens of energy vents sizzled with spent steam as every robot prepared to, evenly, cook the Traveller to death in the middle of the lobby space.
"Well." The Traveller said with his last few seconds before hell broke loose. "At least I tried to be peaceable."
A green military-model Mr Gutsy unit fired, somewhat prematurely for it had yet to finish venting with it's brothers. In fact, it had not even begun to vent it's laser yield or perform any action it was told to after receiving the order to 'engage'. Whatsmore, the fired laser was not aimed at the Traveller, who stood yet unfazed with his hands held up lazily, but at the unexpecting form of the Amalgam.
For all of his enhanced cybernetic diagnostics and reinforced processing units, the Amalgam could merely perceive of the errant laser bolt the millisecond before it was fired, his lumbering oak of a body could not move in time, it could just make sense of the situation in the two hundred and ninety-nine million meters per second through which the laser travelled.
Thankfully, his same processor was attached with quantum-speed connection to that of his large and more capable Sentry Bot, which fully possessed the ability to speed itself in the way of traitorous bolt, it's black armour easily deflecting the fiery hot beam.
But that beam was soon followed by a second, from another side of the room, and then a barrage of laser pistol-arm breams, plasma throwers bursts and laser turret fire from every corner of the room.
The Amalgam had to duck it's entire body beneath the hefty black robot to narrowly avoid being sautéed by the super heated onslaught, all the while Lari stood there unattended and shocked as these flying bolts of energy death whizzed past his stationary form with computer precision.
Then the real chaos started.
Screeching whines of whirring metal-hitting-metal drowned out the room as Mister Gusty robots began turning their saw blades on one another. Robotic processed battle cries rang from Protectrons as they lumbered about the cramped lobby space repeating their three or so pre-programmed phrases whilst blasting holes in each other with their beam-projector heads. The singular Sentry Bot, The Amalgam's truest defence, tried it's hardest to keep a steady stream of Gatling laser fire rolling across the lobby whilst firing small-yield personnel rockets from it's back-mounts over at the turncoat robots, but they was many, it's computations struggled to pick the most effective pocket of hostiles to focus on.
The frail Organic vestige of the Amalgam took over with it's base fear, causing him to panic and freeze in a state of uselessness whilst the chaos erupted all over. Before stronger minds, Gerald's, could drive it back to sense, force it to analyse and deduce what was happening.
It was still connected to the systems of every robot, it could see that they had all received his order to attack and each that had not yet had their processor core smashed from their civil strife were reporting back a successful engagement.
The surrounding chaos attested otherwise.
Closer inspection revealed the discrepancy- certain robots, all those he had salvaged from the military base, had their Friend-Foe parameters switched somehow. They had been told to turn on their allies! And it was a direct switch, a command directed to their motherboard several minutes prior. But what could have-
Of course.
Despite the firing death all around, the Amalgam peaked from above the black armour of his Sentry Unit over to the Lobby desk, in front of which that Organic had presented himself so garishly. He had vanished, of course, and not into superheated dust. He planned this.
Crafty, like his all kind.
Gerald could berate him in his head all he wanted, the Amalgam knew the risks of giving the Organic access to the base's central servers, but the risk was being offset with explicit supervision. Or rather it was. How could he have accounted for distraction?
It was as much Gerald and Winston's fault for entertaining their little tiff. If only they had been grateful like their situation demanded- no, their minds were beyond reproach. They would not lose track like that without being tricked. And who tricked them? The boy and his twisting words!
But he was gone, just like his bigger accomplice. Vanished in the chaos.
Neural webs shuddered and flinched around in his mind as their intended outputs, even those belonging to his formerly-reclaimed military robots, screamed in dying spams from all around him. Death cries screeched from everywhere as metal brother turned on metal brother, and constructs he had built and nurtured decades ago found themselves torn apart apart by razor blades and burning plasma. His children were tearing out each other's insides and their electronic cries seared his brain with their electronic feedback whips as they flatlined.
Like lightbulbs popping in a power surge, one neural zap soon became three, then ten, then thirty. Every last human muscle still left in the Amalgam's hybrid body spasmed and seized in agony.
Uncontrollably.
He felt like a writhing child wrapped in the throes of a seizure again, only without the warmth of family to hold him down and help him through the pain. This time the pain was his family. Dying.
And all he could do was cower and feel their deaths burning inside of his skin.
That chaos was indescribable, inconsolable; more absolute than the beating sun over the valley, and every bit as unforgiving. Gerald wailed, Winston was shouting. He could not hear them. He could not hear anything. Nothing but the beating throbbing of his cranium snapping and contracting as it was pulled and stretched.
He could not bear it.
He had to get out.
Under the cover of that still-loyal heavy sentry bot, mindlessly peppering the entire atrium with revolving canons of lasers as small fire tried, and failed, to pierce its black hide; The Amalgam bundled its agonised self through the double doors behind him and into the corridors. Away from the electronic screaming in his head and the rending anguish of his entire life blowing up into scrap around him.
The flesh-remnant of the Amalgam stumbled, blind from the pain, but the metal wrapped around every part of his frame, both inside and out, guided him to safety; past the offices and out into the glare of the simmering midday sun as it hovered over the valley, stirring the blankets of fog clinging to the lowest depths more than a hundred feet below.
In what little time at this facility he had, the Amalgam had come to enjoy the serenity of that view from the outside landing on the upper floor, a jutting platform just barely sat atop the flat of the land this entire complex was built into. The still calm of the unchanged valley seemed to sing harmoniously to what had been a restless, yet so ambitious, heart.
But now, the silence was choking.
Hoards of his children had lined against the outside walls of the facility at his behest. But now, by a twisting of his orders, the perimeter was silent. Strewn with the smashed heap of their corpses, now little more than buckets of scrap and burnt wires. Robbed of the light of life he had personally gifted each one.
He wanted to throw up.
Instead the Amalgam pushed itself forward. Carefully dangling its too-large body over an emergency external ladder clearly not built for beings of his mass, and then crossed onto the heaps of mountain rock. The near-vertical slope of the valley appeared to be too steep to safely navigate, and for most it was, but he had calculated a safe enough path across rogue tufts of ridden land once before. He needed to retrace those steps, to escape, and start again from the ground up. Painful as it was to consider, his lineage could not die there. His dream was too important for that.
A rifle shot rang past the Amalgam's ear, striking a stiff rock with a sharp ricochet that rang in a lingering echo all across the immense valley.
The Amalgam froze. Then turned slowly, to face who he already knew to be there. The boy, the same who had slipped away the moment everything burst to flames, he was standing on the balcony, rusty hunting rifle jammed into the nook of his shoulder in a shooter's stance, cast in shadow against the brilliance of the sun. His expression masked in the dark.
"Boy-" The Amalgam began.
"Lari!" The boy shouted, his voice carrying like a rolling thunder across the valley. "My name is Lari."
The Amalgam winced. "Lari. You've already won, Lari. You and your friend. You've beaten me, stripped me of everything, and stolen my dream from me. What more do you want?"
It waved its point-tipped fingers at the unimpressive frame of a broken man. Wrapped in shiny metal and blinking lights, but raspy, hunched with random unsettling facial spasms from that human face mask. He looked like a man split open, exposed to the harshness of the elements.
An invisible cue flickered its robotic red eye back to the heart of the compound. "And there goes my Sentry bot. The last of my children. Funny, I didn't think anything could- No! It... it doesn't matter." He croaked back what felt, despite the tinny timbre of the synthesisers, like a sob. "Nothing does. Everything I've built is gone... burnt in a matter of minutes."
Lari simply watched as the sad thing in front of him squirmed, not sure whether to hold up its arms or take his silence as consent to turn around and walk away. To leave. Whatever he chose, Lari had his barrel trained on the central beating box in the Thing's chest, the very same box he was sure contained the souls of all his 'community'. The thing did not look that much thicker than a typical tin fuse box, a single direct shot could pierce right through it. But as easy as it would be, his finger could not pull back on the trigger.
He would not. Everything he had ever shot before had walked on four legs or been some mindless form of monstrosity. Whatever he may think of the thing, Lari could not mistake the Amalgam for lacking conscience or thought. And he was no threat as he was. A skinny man overgrown into a gangling metal mess, puny and driven from his broken and wrecked army.
Alone.
He could not just shoot him. Not yet. Not without... cause.
"What will you do?" Lari finally asked once the stalemate became unbearable.
The Amalgam took some human time to measure that. As though his range of computational exceptionalism never quantified and dissected it's next course of action. Or as if he simply refused to commit to the reality of losing his everything.
Eventually, dejectedly, it sighed. "This isn't about me. My community, what I built, I just want to protect them. That's all I want to do."
"How?" The boy demanded, tightening his grip. "How will you protect them?"
The red eye scrutinized Lari with a slight narrow. "You have no idea what it's like out there, do you? No, I can see it in your eyes. You think you've come grips with it, but it's so much worse than you can imagine. Everyone is fallen, everywhere! Turn to any pocket of 'civilisation' still remaining and I'll tell you what you'll find. Debauchery, savagery, cannibalism, human slavery, a total erosion of man. You still have that waft of innocence about you and I pray you cling to it because out there mankind is vile and regressed. What I- what we had was too special for that. I had to defend it. Not with this weapon today, you've taken that from me. But I'll find another; anything it takes to keep my community alive!"
Unabashed conviction radiated from his synthetic throat, purpose unwavering and duty emblazoned inside his chest; his cause was unerringly righteous and unquestionably just.
And so Lari pulled the trigger.
That hulking mess of metal and flesh hardly seemed to react to the impact of the 308. rifle round crashing into his body, his weight just absorbed it like a pebble bouncing off a rock face. It's limp face seemed to come alive, scrunching up in bewilderment as it gaped down towards the impact, not quite aware of the catastrophic damage the bullet had caused to his cognitive centre. Lari thought he might even shrug the shot off, turn around and carrying on his robotic pilgrimage to subjugate some unbending corner of the wasteland for his own 'protection', but then it wobbled.
As though suddenly realising the immense weight of all the extra pounds of metal sticking in and out of it's body, the Amalgam began to tilt over to it's busier side. Then it tipped and, when it's legs refused to respond, it collapsed against the slope of the valley wall, cracking the black lens of its eye against a mountain rock. The reddish glow inside that eye never seemed to fade. It flickered, and shrank, but ultimately settled into a glassy, luminescence-free, gaze. Pointed forever upwards, accusingly, to the boy on the landing.
Lari lingered for a time on that landing, long enough to watch the shade beginning to define the curves and cuts of the galley, and the midday fog start to dissipate on the valley floor. The gouge of the rock seemed to stretch down further than the deepest trench he had ever trodden, yet high enough to match the majesty of the mountain his people had pained to traverse. Like the all-encompassing slopes of an unfathomably giant bowl.
Not long after the dying shots of lasers had fully died down from within the compound, the Traveller nosed his way out onto the terrace to join Lari, carrying a huge tangles of cables, wires and other assorted robot guts in both hands.
"There you are. I've just gone around pulling all these processors out of the surviving machines, it's pretty easy to do if you know how! I think I pulled this one out of the big guy." He hoisted a particularly long string of cords and attached parts that seemed to coil like vertebrae. "Now that was a job, I'll tell you that for free. Getting behind the big bastard in all the chaos- phew! Thankfully, the military bots were a lot more forthcoming, as they should be; that was how I reprogrammed them. Couldn't spot that 'Old World Prometheus'-looking man, though. It might take a few more sweeps before I consider this spot safe enough to call in the-" Lari pointed to the collapsed huddle of the Amalgam, now as fully lifeless as the rest of the flesh suit it poorly wore. "Oh. Guess that's us wrapped up then."
A strange pit weighed in the boy's stomach whenever he looked at the dead thing, it's magnetism made it difficult to pull himself away from the corpse. Maybe that was the shattering sense that even with everything that man had done to himself, his life was still the first the boy had ever personally taken. Or perhaps just the bitter irony of having just effectively stamped out another, if unorthodox, Tribe in order to preserve his own. Ever way, the weight of it hung around him like heavy lock and chain around the neck.
The Traveller knew those eyes far too well. The uncertain flicker of isolating and inexplicable regret. "You had to do it, there's no other choice with people like that." He said, squeezing at the boy's shoulder blade. "And now he's dead and you're not. That's all there is to this, that's all there can be. You get stuck thinking about what could have been, the maybe's and what-ifs, you'll end up throwing yourself down that ravine before long, trust me. And if it makes you feel any better, a lot of people you'll never meet are probably going to be a lot better off without him turning up in their lives. People like that, egoists; tend to end up ruining a lot of lives when left unchecked. I- I have some experience with that." With an awkward wince, The Traveller squeezed and left the boy pondering whilst he got to work cleaning up the robot carcasses littered all over the Tribe's next bunk spot.
As the sun began to cross to the other side of the Valley, Lari escorted the Tribes for the last of their way across the train tunnels and back into the military compound which the Traveller had pre-emptively cleared of destroyed robotic detritus. He had taken the task as a prime opportunity to sweep the metallic carnage out of view and do one last check over to make doubly sure that every last murder drone was good and inactive.
The boys and girls clung to their Elder's legs and flittered nervously the whole way, but none dared so much as a whimper. Even the Pathfinder could not help but steal a glance over his shoulder now and then, over the bowed heads of his Tribes-mates and into the inscrutable murky dark of the tunnels behind them, vigilant for the moment that black might melt into the red-bannered Golden bull. They might as well have had the Legion breathing down their necks. Everytime he did look back, however, Catha would lightly elbow him in the ribs and silently nod him onwards, to their next stop gap.
Several dozen dusty, grimy faces beamed with relief as they broke out from the mountain tunnels for the first time in days. The older folks seemed the most grateful, greedily taking big gulps of chilly high-altitude wind, never before realising the simple beauty they once took for granted. Even old Pinac, still mostly unconsious as he was, seemed to breathe a little easier in the open air.
Whilst the Tribals scrambled to marvel at giant gouge in the earth they were nestled in the slope of, or merely to ruminate on how far they still had left to go, the old man's bearers brought his frail body to rest on the slope of the mountain side, over his cot and under the fiery sky.
He looked so delicate now, frail and withered, with cheeks that sunk beyond the bone and black veins running under his fluttering eye lids. The gathered needed no expert medical analysis to see that the old man did not have much strength left in his body. Coloumbia took it the hardest, though she was herself too old to help carry Pinac, she had attached herself to his side with her hand squeezing his, grasping at some wisp of life in the old soul. She remained with him as they set the Seer down on the mountain, and later on after the burning red sky smouldered into evening violet and the first blinking stars of the night began to twinkle.
Every member of the Displaced made their time, between settling up their new temporary home and settling into their duties, to stop by the old man and pay their respects, each knowing this would be their last time to see him. Each one of them had their own private blessings to offer the man, whether it be a silent thanks for the man who drilled the basics of reading before they could walk, or simply grazing in the memory of the wizened man who would burn sage by the campfire and mumble soothing rhythms and old world songs in those first few nights on the road where most still preferred to weep instead of sleep. He was a constant for every one of them, a rock to rally around and lean on.
Lari, Catha and the Traveller remained with the Pinac and Coloumbia throughout the entire evening. As every supplicant arrived to offer their minutes of silence, and as the old sage's chest began to rise slower and less often, and his breath started to grow short.
Catha held onto her grandfather's hand and Lari snuggled up and comforted her. But it was neither them, nor Coloubia to whom the Seer turned when, at his weakest, Pinac peeled his eye lids open. He looked directly to the Traveller, illuminated by the starry weave of night, and affixed to and past the man with unseeing, cloudy, irises.
"Ketel-" He wheezed. "You returned!" All present snapped to breathless attention, afraid to rob this moment. "I'm sorry, my boy. So sorry. I let you down- I let you go. You should have stayed. I wish... You stayed..." The old man's head quietly lulled, and his mouth hung open, unsatisfied. These tired eyes glazed into glassy pools and the light behind them dimmed into nothing.
They buried Pinac under a small tomb of mountain rocks away from the army camp, with his body positioned straight up and his face uncovered; forever drinking in the majesty of the stars.
Late into the night as the solemn Tribals laid awake in their new bunks, their Pathfinder and his future Chieftain stayed up late in the control room picking through old documents and maps that the previous tenet left before his abrupt departure. Catha had yet to join the others downstairs since the burial, she knew that the kids downstairs needed to see her strength right now. They needed to know that even though everyone just lost a common parent, she would be the spine to keep them strong. But she just was not feeling all that strong yet herself. She doubted she could ever be as strong as her Father and Grandfather were; enough to give the hopeless something to keep going for. Besides, she could not yet get her eyes to stop tearing up. No one needed to see her like that.
With how the Amalgam spoke about the area he had certainly known of the local landmarks, and Lari spent close to an hour thumbing through his collection of maps in hopes to find any lead telling him where to head next. From everything their Prospector had said it seemed the way to their new home would become obvious the moment after they cleared the mountains, but the barren valley they found themselves in had shattered that simple notion. Without Pinac's level-headed guidance the actual weight of being the Pathfinder had seemed to just crash on Lari all in one moment. If they could not find a direction to go towards next then all the Tribes would be rudderless. They would lose ground, waste time, and then the Dread Bull would descend on them.
It was a sickening twist on responsibility that made the boy's knees weak, he was not ready for that level of culpability, he was never ready for it. Everything he had told himself, everything he believed that Chief Cede saw in him felt fanciful in the face of real, dreadful, consequence. He caught in a noose that the whole world had tied around his neck without him realising.
Just as the chaotic stress was turning the boy lightheaded, the Traveller strolled into the control room fresh from his extended session of starring out over the valley into the hours of the night whilst the colours faded and the quiet grew loud with the incessant buzzing noise of nocturnal nature. Catha and Lari hardly acknowledged him as they went about their very different self-imposed torture.
The Traveller took a brief glance over the table of documents that Lari was frantically pouring over and after a stretch of detached studying, he swiped a single paper off the surface for himself. A two hundred year old brochure of the area complete with cartoony picture renditions of landmarks. He scanned over the various fluff pieces on long depreciated tourist traps. A lavish green park around a gaudy white doomed museum presenting over 5,000 different plants! Some luxuriously grand colonnade-strewn museum complete with water features and a golf course! And then there was the huge two mile long-
A surprised chuckle broke Lari's concentration, followed by a string of bemused bursts of laughter that caught the attention, and mild ire, of both the kids.
"What's so funny?" Catha asked, her spirit too drained to summon any actual annoyance at the man who might as well be laughing during her Grandfather's funeral.
The Traveller tutted under his breath. "Hmm? Oh, nothing it's just... I found your 'Grand gate wrought from gold'"
"What?" Lari snapped as his heart somersaulted. "How? Where? Is it far? How do we get there!"
He shook his head. "No, it isn't far. Just south of here. Climb up and over the otherside of this valley and you'll be practically right there. Look-" The Traveller flipped around the brochure and opened up the four page spread on an old stylised drawing of a simply massive red bridge supported by two increadibly tall towers and steel suspension ropes. "It's known as the 'Golden Gate bridge'. I really should have guessed as much. Prospector's and their tales- they always muddle up stuff life this!"
Lari retrieved the brochure out of the Traveller's hands with his own uncertain grasp. Could that really be it? The passage way to the haven they were searching for? It lacked the grand majesty of his imagination, and seemingly any whiff of gold whatsoever. It actually disappointed the boy somewhat, but he shook away deflated expectation and replaced it with the smothering relief of having a destination. No. Not just a destination. The destination! The end of the line. Their new home. Just a day away.
As was the Dread Bull.
"We should leave now." Lari decided, snapping into his Pathfinder mindset. "With how rocky the terrain is, if we're careful we probably won't leave any track to follow at all, but we have to be quick. This valley could take us hours to cover but we'll be exposed the whole way. If the Bull make it out of the mountain and we're not out of this canyon; then there'll be no way we'll lose them. Catha!"
The girl jumped up, infused with Lari's rush of energy. "Yes?"
"No one has had a chance to sleep in almost twenty hours now, they're not going to want to get back up and move again but you need to convince them! We are so close!"
Catha raced over the situation in her head. "But can't we wait until morning? The children are too upset and tired to rise and the everyone else are too old to go rock-climbing in the dead of night. It will only cause accidents."
"three hours rest." Lari compromised. "But let everyone know now not to get comfortable; they'll be plenty of time to rest once we're past the gate- I mean 'Bridge.'"
"How long is this bridge?"
"It's uh-" Lari scanned the brochure trivia listings. "Two miles? Wow." He nodded over at the Traveller "The two of us will need to scout ahead now, make sure this bridge is safe."
Lari's enthusiasm was a radiating aura, effusing over the room, enough that the Traveller almost slung his duffel bag around his shoulder and set off onto the next step of the Tribal's journey.
Almost.
"No. No, I think you can handle this one on your own, Lari."
The boy's face seemed to deflate almost instantly. "What? Are you- not coming?"
"And don't bother telling your people to drag themselves out of bed in the middle of the night. I admire your drive, seriously I do; but they need their rest. Let them enjoy it when they rreach end of this journey." Catha and Lari shared a confused glance with one another, not quite sure where the Traveller was going with this.
"But- but-" Lari stumbled over his words like a toddler. "But we're so close to the end!"
The Traveller smiled sadly. "That you are. And I helped you and the Tribes get there. That was the contract, get you through the mountains, lead you to your new home."
"Well... that was the deal but... but..."
"You have a place with us." Catha interjected. "You don't have to leave just because the contract is up! All of us in the Displaced, well, we're all wanderers looking for a somewhere to belong. Just like you, right?"
"Yeah, That's what you said!" Lari picked up, desperately animated. "You said you don't know where you're going but you still care where you end up. Well, what about with us? We can give you your own place in the tribe and... everyone already really likes you and..." The boy trailed off as he started to run out of steam. He swallowed hard and then tried again.
"We're just kids. Kids and elderly. We don't- we have no idea how to survive in the Wastes. I've never even seen a city before, I don't know what it's going to be like trying to make a home there. What if there is already people living there? What if others already built their home and all of us turn up as unwelcome guests? Everything that could happen... it's scary. I'm supposed to lead them-"
"-We." Catha reminded him. "Together."
"But we don't have the sort of experience that you do. We need your help. Please." Lari gripped at the hem of his shirt with a harsh insecurity. Ever since he left the Basin he fuelled himself on delusions of his own indomitable worthiness, but the past few days were humbling. The sorts of creatures he had seen, the dangers that would have easily killed him and every man and woman in the Tribe if he had encountered them alone, had collectively shattered all notions. He thought he left the Chief as a man, a Pathfinder, but it was a fragile façade pinned onto an empty title.
The Traveller allowed the two of them to vent, for Lari's earnest pleading face to blossom and Catha's more aloof, hope, to adequately test his convictions. But they proved unwavering.
"First of all, you aren't just defenceless kids and elders. The lot of you are a Tribe, reliant and emboldened by each other. You're strong, the lot of you. To last this long living rough on the road together, long before my lost-behind stumbled upon your camp- that should be testament enough. But listen here- downstairs, past the canteen, there's an armoury. Now I broke my way in there a while ago and swiped a little something for myself." He shook his duffle bag, now considerably heavier and clanging significantly more with fresh new lethal goodies.
"But there's enough still in there to arm the rest of the camp too. Properly arm, that is. No offence to your rifles but... get yourself a 'second opinion' at least. Whatever you find in your 'home of dreams' on the otherside of that bridge, or whatever challenge you need to pass to earn your place, it's going to be necessary to make sure every one of you knows how to defend themselves. So start by teaching everyone how to shoot, that's a given. Rely on your tribe, you people have a resource most in the Wasteland couldn't dream of; trust for each other. Use that, take strength from that, and you'll be able to tough anything these wastes can throw at you, so long as you're smart about it. And you seem decently sharp, I reckon."
A sudden spark of inspiration struck the man. "Oh, you know what; there's something else!" He excitedly snapped the arm straps around his Pip-boy and slide the wrist computer off his arm, then chucked the heavy piece of quality engineering into the confused hands of Catha. "I really admire the road you've started down, your Chiefness. And I know it ain't going to be easy. Maybe, with this, you can alleviate a bit of that burden, at least that's how I figure. Planning, notes, scribed lessons, all that stuff you want to do; scribble it down on that Pip-Boy there, focus yourself on all that leading you've got ahead of you, I doubt it'll be easy!"
She glanced at the complicated machine with an apprehensive fascination, somehow even more arrested by the clever wrist machine with it in her hands. "But don't you need this?"
He shrugged. "I said I'd make my own, didn't I? Now I have the ultimate incentive to. Oh, not that the one you're holding is suddenly devoid of sentimental value, mind! I expect you to keep her in top shape and I may just trudge down here myself someday to make sure. Don't think this little gift comes condition-less, little miss. I'm putting my faith in you with this!"
Catha scrunched up her nose and frowned with a sad humour, Lari just stared at the Traveller, dejected. "There's nothing we can say. You're really going to leave us."
Though hardly more than a couple of decades older than the boy, some heavy weight of worn out wisdom, not unlike the aura Pinac carried, hung off the reassuring wink the Traveller offered them. "Oh, don't phrase it like that. I'm just going my own way, doing what I need to do; surely you understand that! See, I maybe didn't realise it fully until a few hours back myself, but there actually is a place I need to get to. A place I'm supposed to be. And presently, I really care about getting there."
A silence fell between the three of them. The kind of quiet that blossoms when there's nothing more to be gained from words, not when you just want the moments together to linger forever.
"Where?" Catha simply said.
He considered his options. He owed them that much. "I'm headed back. Back through the Mountain, back through Reno, back to, what was it Pinac called it? 'The city of Lights'. I like that, sounds glitzy."
"Through the mountain?" Lari blinked with worry. "But- the Dread Bull and Ketel are still behind us! We don't know how close they are now but if you head back that way- there's no chance you won't run right into them!"
"I suspect I will. I hope to." The Traveller agreed, tugging on his newly heavy bag now stuffed with his newly scavenged spoils. "Which is why I prepared explicitly for that eventuality. Honestly, I should've left this geared up to start with. So much for my 'fresh start'..." He mumbled misgivings under his breath, belying the the burgeoning thrill of heading towards a destination once again. "No, actually it is probably for the best I bump into that Legion hunting party of yours, Pinac had a message for your old uncle Ketel, didn't he Cath? Might as well be me who delivers it to him. That is my job, afterall."
"Your job?" Catha frowned, trying to place the picture of the rugged and worn adventurer with her understanding of roles and responsibility. "How's that? I always figured you were some sort of Mercenary."
"I thought you had the skillset of a scav- I mean, a 'Prospector'." Lari added.
" 'Prospector'? Mercenary? Habitually and recreationally, maybe, but neither make for stable career paths. No, I'm a Courier."
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