Chapter 15- Outlaw Rose and Bluebird Song
Morning broke over the horizon, light poured through Gallow’s window. He awoke to the sensation of sunlight hitting his face, radiating through his dusty window. It was a habit he’d picked up from his time in the military, one of the few things he would admit he appreciated about the instruction of Captain Jepta.
Naturally, this was about the same time that Gideon awoke in his room at the inn. He had decided to return alone, without Sonsee. The only reason he had needed her help was because he was unfamiliar with the area, but now he was easily able to retrace his route to Fenway, where he could catch a train back to the East. A small part of him acknowledged that he would rather leave her to her own devices in the Garden, rather than drag her away from it so soon.
Across the stretch of land that made up the town of Sigrit, Eli Halloway awoke to begin preparing for the day of tilling soil. He stopped by Janna’s room, peeking in to see if she was still asleep. She rested peacefully, her blonde hair scattered messily across the bed, a heavy book still in her arms.
In his office, Gallow got dressed and ran a small wooden comb through his hair to straighten it out a bit.
“I should at least make the courtesy of seeing him off, I guess.”
Gallow would never have said it to him, but he didn’t harbor the same grudge against Gideon as the Captain had for him. The experience that night five years ago had cemented in his mind that there were few people on this planet quite like him, people who were free from fear.
After pulling his boots on and opening the front door, he began the walk out and around the town.
Gideon left the inn, paying Gabriel a compliment on the kind service. He stepped outside, in full uniform, to where his horse awaited him. Suddenly, he felt a disturbance in his heart, a primordial sense of danger.
“Something isn’t-”
In her room, Janna awoke from her slumber, but despite having no task for that morning, it was a rude and panicked awakening. A moment after her eyes opened, she sat up, letting the book fall out of her arms. She was wide awake, her heart was beating quickly, but she didn’t know why, a primordial sense of danger.
“What’s going on? What’s out there-?”
Gideon’s eyes flew to the east, and a moment later they widened in shock, his lips parted.
From the horizon, and quickly approaching, what seemed like an army of men on horseback. At its lead was a man whose flowing gray cape was visible even from this distance. This man was Warren Roseraid.
Gideon reached for his saber, there was no time to meet them on horseback, his steed would almost certainly be killed and leave him stranded and strategically surrounded.
---
Gallow, who was no more than a few steps from his door, heard a voice to his right.
“Gallow! Quickly!”
The shout came from Sonsee, who was running toward him with a stern expression painted on her face.
“Sonsee?” he called back. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
She caught up to him, nearly out of breath; she had clearly run the stump that hid the Garden all the way to the center of town, where his office was.
“From the east,” she cried, frantically. “An- it looks like a small army!”
“An army?!” he replied, now sharing her panic. “What the hell do you mean ‘an army’?!”
“I mean that there’s at least a hundred men coming from the west!”
Gallow froze for a moment, thinking.
“Aw hell…” he said, coolly. “I guess there’s only one choice left…”
Sonsee nodded in agreement.
---
All the way to the eastern side of the town Gideon walked calmly towards the approaching army. Swarms of men on horseback pulled ahead in a vanguard formation, they reached the town within minutes. The hooves of their rides beat furiously against the dirt, kicking up dust and making an incredible cacophony as they invaded the street.
Gideon lunged for one with superhuman speed, but his blade seemed to miss by a hair’s breadth.
“What?!” his mind howled. “That strike should have been perfectly placed!”
---
Gallow and Sonsee raced to the other edge of town, unaware of the battle unfolding on the east.
“Did you say a small army?” Gallow asked, huffing. “What is that, fifty? A hundred?”
“I couldn’t make an exact headcount,” Sonsee replied, keeping pace with him. “But it looked like fifty.”
“I don’t know why that question matters,” Gallow thought. “It’s not like it makes much of a difference.”
---
Gideon swung aggressively at a few more of the horsemen who now encircled him. Each attack barely missed, the target dodging out of the way in odd, unnatural movements.
“What’s going on?!” Gideon was beginning to get immensely frustrated. He had cut down waves of trained soldiers on horseback before, and in much worse visibility, so why was he so rusty all of a sudden?
“Something’s wrong,” he thought. “Something’s been wrong since the moment I saw this army.”
Before he could think any further, he heard a distinct call from within the ranks of horsemen.
“[SALAMANDER]”
The call was cold and calm. All about him, the world seemed to flash a deep crimson color, as if he were viewing it from the other side of a red lens. He could sense a force moving about him, but it was as if he couldn’t react to it.
Suddenly, the red vanished from the world, and he could pinpoint the presence: behind him. He whipped around, casting his saber out instinctively to combat his opponent. From above, Warren descended with remarkable speed, bringing his arm down to meet the blade.
Gideon’s sword collided with its target, but it could not cut through. Warren’s arm had encountered his attack and been unaffected; in fact, it was holding against it, as if an equivalent force. Warren, having been suspended in the air for a moment, pushed off the blade, shooting back into the air and landing several feet away. Gideon quickly examined the arm that had blocked his masterful swing: it was glowing a faint red that quickly dissipated as Warren stared him down. Oddly, his one rosey eye seemed to gaze more deeply than his actual eye.
Of course, this man was the Outlaw Rose.
“You don’t seem too upset,” Warren taunted stoically.
Gideon smiled, his battle fervor silently rising.
“Of course,” he replied. “I was getting tired of my strikes missing.”
A thin smile curled around Warren’s lips. “Don’t expect any more than that,” his whisper was deafening. “Before your life ends.”
---
The Halloway farm house was stampeded upon by the invading horsemen. Eli shrunk back behind the front door, desperately looking for his shotgun.
Gallow and Sonsee burst outside the town limits to the removed residence.
“I can’t let them-” Sonsee thought. “I can’t let them get to the Spring!”
Gallow’s silver six-shooter was drawn and loaded. A horseman charged at him, only to be met with the thunder of gunfire. Just as with Gideon, the attacker dodged the shots with an otherworldly ease, twisting his body at the last moment. As the rider approached, Gallow could look into his eyes, the rest of his face being obscured by a bandana.
“Wait,” he stopped, the Navigator glimmered on his hand. “Those eyes- I can…”
Gallow understood the secret, even he didn’t quite know how he realized it at the time, it was a primordial sense.
Gallow leapt towards the attacker.
“No!” Sonsee cried, spear drawn, unaware of his plan.
Gallow arced through the air, enhanced by the latent power of the Navigator, using his soul to pull him along. He pulled his right arm back and shot it out towards the face of the horseman, who turned his neck at the last moment.
Suddenly, a burst of energy left Gallow’s right arm, and the arm of his spirit body was left behind, like an afterimage, where he had been in space a moment ago. The spirit arm was the one to connect with the head of his target, passing through as if it were vapor.
“Gotcha!” Gallow thought triumphantly. He had sensed correctly: these men were not human, or at least not living. As he would come to understand soon, the spirit body overlapped with the physical one, and the Navigator had given him the control and awareness to manipulate his ethereal form. His spirit eyes had recognized that the horseman had no soul, in fact, he was the construct of a different soul; the same way the human eye distinguishes between a person and a mannequin. The brief moment he could touch this construct with his abstract form had allowed him to sense the trail leading back to the spirit of the one who had created it.
He followed the trail with his eyes, tracing it to a single horse in the crowd. He fired two shots in that direction.
---
Malvado, who had taken charge of the westward assault, was hiding in the crowd of false horsemen, assigned to protect Bleech. Suddenly, his Vocation sensed two bullets hurtling toward the boy.
“[ALONE DOWN THERE]!” he cried.
A wall of shadow flew up from the earth, pitch black and empty. It intercepted the bullets before they could reach the boy. Malvado exhaled quickly, and turned his shadow sensors to high alert.
“What the hell?” he heard from afar. There was no mistaking it; the bullets, that voice: it was Gallow.
“That bastard!” he thought, enraged.
Malvado broke rank from the rest of the army and pointed his pistol squarely at the dark gunman, firing off a shot. As the bullet approach Gallow, he kept a cool look on his face, and somehow dodged out of the way with an unnatural speed.
---
Gallow, having dodged the shots, immediately recognized that there was at least one real opponent in the crowd. Gazing at Malvado, he instantly recalled his appearance.
“Sonsee,” he said to her, who had caught up with him. “I need you to distract that guy for one second.” She followed his eyes to Malvado, and understood what he meant.
“Can do,” she replied, and dashed with incredible athleticism to the side. Malvado took aim once more, but before he could fire, she extended her arm out to him.
“[VANISHING POINT]!”
Immediately, his perception was darkened, and he felt himself moving with incredible speed to the right, as if on an axis. When the world came back he had been ripped from his horse and moved to the direct opposite side of Sonsee. This was power of her Vocation, Vanishing Point, the ability to make souls revolve around her.
Now, having been rotated around her, the rising sun was no longer to his back, and it momentarily blinded him, leaving him unable to fire a straight shot. Sonsee took the opportunity and thrust her spear toward his chest.
Malvado’s own Vocation, Alone Down There, enabled him to sense souls through nearby shadows. Luckily, it remained active while he was in the semi-abstract space Sonsee needed to create to move him, and he was able to detect her position and movements despite being initially disoriented.
He turned his body, dodging her attack by an inch, and grabbed the shaft of the spear.
“What?” Sonsee shouted. “How was he able to react so quickly?”
“You aren’t the only one with a trick,” Malvado teased.
Sonsee smiled, “That’s not the only one.”
“Huh?”
She pulled and twisted on the spear, causing it to break apart into several segments, connected by a chain. The jolt knocked it out of Malvado’s hand. Sonsee had become adept at both the straight and whip styles of her weapon, and easily spun it in her hand. The specific movements took advantage of the tension of the chain so that she could almost puppeteer the motion of the individual segments. The tip danced especially closely to Malvado’s face.
---
Gallow jabbed the shoulder of a nearby horseman with his spirit body and refreshed his vision of the trail.
“Got it!”
He had singled it out to a horse hidden behind a crowd of the constructs. He fired another shot, and with Malvado preoccupied,the bullet grazed the horse’s body. It buckled, and threw its rider off.
---
Bleech hit the ground, suddenly being knocked into awareness. Maintaining such a large illusion with Treachery required an intense focus, and he had to block out most of his surroundings to keep it up.
Having been rudely shaken from his focus, he was forced to release his Vocation, and within an instant, all of the horsemen vanished from existence.
Malvado and Sonsee stopped in their battle, as the number of people in the area suddenly went from fifty-something to four.
Bleech suddenly began to quiver.
“T-these people…” he thought. “They’re going to kill me!”
But Gallow did not take aim and fire at him, and Sonsee did not pierce his heart with her spear, and Malvado did not execute him like a disappointed crime boss. Instead, as he cowered on the ground, Gallow turned to face Malvado.
“Now, that’s a relief,” he called, tipping his hat.
“The innocent aren’t going to die today,” he smiled.