2

The first thought that had popped into Connor’s head had been ‘What the hell is a demon hunter?’ Before he could get the words out of his mouth, though, he knew exactly what she was talking about. He didn’t know how he knew or why, but he knew—without question. (More importantly, he supposed, was the fact that he couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t known it before she told him. He would have to find some answers to some of the bizarre questions swimming around in his head.) He was a demon hunter. Suddenly his mind flooded with knowledge on the subject. He remembered why he carried so many weapons. He remembered what the purpose of each one was. Until that moment he had been utilizing the weapons instinctively. Now, though, it was as though some sort of switch had just been flipped in his brain and he actually knew what he had been doing.

Most of all, Connor remembered the demons. The demons he hunted were not just any run-of-the-mill dark creatures. There were no vampires or werewolves among his quarry. He could remember having encountered a number of these relatively harmless demon-like creatures along his journey, though the memories dated back to a time that was still hazy—long before the last two weeks. Other creatures that were often considered demonic had also crossed his path, but he didn’t bother with anything so trivial as a goblin or a troll. It was true that he had disposed of a number of each of these less-dangerous types of demons, but he had only done so because it was easy for him and they actually were a danger to the people. He didn’t go in search of them, though, because it was not his purpose.

His purpose was much greater. What he hunted were the real demons… the elemental demons. They were the really treacherous kind. First there were the wind demons. In truth, they weren’t too tough to deal with. Anyone who could pick up a weapon could dispose of a wind demon with no more effort than it took to kill a human. Wind demons were more of a nuisance than anything.

Water demons and earth demons, on the other hand, were quite a bit tougher. They were too powerful to be taken down by anyone who wasn’t highly skilled with a weapon or power to which the demons were susceptible. Each had special strengths and weaknesses. Knowing which weakness corresponded to each kind of demon was usually three-quarters of the fight.

It was the fire demons, though, that were the reason for the existence of demon hunters. Even battle-hardened warriors with exceptional skills were no match for the fire demons. The killing of a fire demon required three things. The right weapon was the first among them. The power of the fire demon rendered most weapons useless against them.

The second requirement was the knowledge of how to stop a fire demon. They couldn’t be destroyed by conventional means, even by someone wielding a weapon that had been forged for that purpose.

And the third thing… Connor had no idea what the third thing was. Then again, he wasn’t sure how he knew there were three things, either. His flood of memories had some pretty big gaps in it.

“How do you know that?” he asked.

Charlie studied him for a moment, trying to decide whether he was asking for proof that he really was a demon hunter. She concluded that what he really wanted was to know what had indicated his identity to her.

“The symbols on your armor,” she finally said, “and the markings on your hands and neck.”

“I have marks like these on my neck?” he asked, holding up his hands and examining the ink-covered flesh.

“Several, actually.”

“And do you know what they mean?”

“Some of them,” Charlie answered. “But they’re all vaguely familiar. That’s how everyone knows you’re a demon hunter. Well, that and the ring.”

“What, this?” Connor asked, holding up his left hand. There was a plain silver band around his middle finger. It was wide and thick, but otherwise unremarkable to his way of thinking. “It doesn’t look like much to me.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Charlie said. “I had forgotten about that.”

“What?”

“Well, it’s not so much that I forgot, though I guess I did. It’s more that I wasn’t sure it was really true—which is probably why I forgot. I guess your answer confirms that it is true.”

Connor considered telling her to get on with it, but he decided they weren’t quite that friendly just yet. He controlled his urge and waited for Charlie to get to the point.

“There’s a legend—well, I guess it’s not really a legend now that I know it really is true—that says the ring of the demon hunter is some kind of talisman that guides him (or her). But the part I’d forgotten was that the demon hunters only feel the ring, they don’t really see it.”

“What are you talking about? I can see it. It’s right here,” he said waving his left hand as if to show her the ring.

“Sorry, that’s not what I mean,” she replied. “I mean that you don’t see it properly. You can’t see what’s on the ring. The ring of the demon hunter bears the demon’s crest.”

“The demon’s crest,” Connor said thoughtfully. He felt that same sensation he’d experienced several times since meeting Charlie—the one where he wanted to ask what she meant but then he suddenly knew. Not in a way that he could explain it, but he knew just the same. He nodded after a moment and said, “That’s right.”

For the first time in what Connor thought of as this strange adventure, sleep was a more peaceful affair for Connor that night. Also for the fist time, however, it was several hours in coming. He lay awake, staring at the deep blue sky, amused by the number of visible planets in the firmament. He was used to seeing one moon and a billion stars, interspersed with an occasional celestial body of either greater size or closer proximity. He hadn’t really looked at the late night sky much since the first day of the adventure.

Apart from the greatly increased number of either closer or larger objects in the sky, there was something else that Connor found completely unexpected. He saw a multitude of flying creatures, the likes of which he would never have guessed might be patrolling the night sky. Most of the flying beasts appeared to be nocturnal birds of various types, but there were a few that refused easy categorization.

The birds meant nothing to Connor, though he was surprised at the sheer number of night fliers he saw. It was odd enough to see so many in the darkness, but even in the daylight, he couldn’t remember having seen a single bird in the last two weeks. The one that gave him pause, though, was unlike anything he could remember ever having seen in either of his two overlapping sets of memories.

In retrospect, it had been the last thing he remembered seeing before he finally nodded off for the night, so it was well-within the realm of possibility that he had simply dreamt it after having fallen asleep, or even imagined it just before. Whatever the case, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen a huge flying creature of some kind. The only thing he could equate it to was a giant manta. Of course the manta was part of the ray family, which he knew were, without exception, underwater creatures—not fliers. And yet, he had seen something flying overhead—or at least, he thought he had—that looked like a devil ray.

For the first time he could remember, Connor awoke before the second sun crested the horizon. Callisto, the first sun, was, in fact, only half visible as he left his dreams behind. This was due, in large part, to the unbearable racket that Charlie was making as she broke camp. There was a small fire burning between them with a little pot of water boiling on an improvised rack over the flame. Connor rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sat up, instinctively replacing the sunglasses he had only removed as he lay down to sleep. Charlie turned back to her water and noticed that he was awake.

“Good morning,” she said cheerily.

“Yeah, sure,” he mumbled as he got up.

“Would you like tea?” she asked.

“Pass,” he answered.

“Not a morning person?”

“Actually, I don’t mind it all,” Connor said. “But I don’t usually wake up for another hour or so.”

“Ah, sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve got to get water today anyway. You want to look for the stream with me, or are you going off on your own?”

“I need water,” Charlie answered. “I used about half of what you had left—and I could use a bath.”

Connor wasn’t carrying any soap, but he thought a healthy rinse sounded like a pretty good idea, too. They made good time into the woods and back. It was an uneventful journey filled with light conversation, completing the necessary errands, and returning to the path. Charlie had decided to accompany Connor, at least to the next town, which was supposed to be a place called Varoshan. It took them two more days to make it to the edge of the town. By that time they were in a much less-desolate part of the region, where flowering plants and wild grass grew along the sides of the path they walked. Strangely enough, though, they didn’t find any wildlife in that area either, despite the notably better conditions.

For the next few nights Connor continued to spend the first hours of darkness wide awake, staring into the heavens, but he saw no further sign of the great manta ray-like creature patrolling the night sky. He hadn’t mentioned the apparition to his traveling companion, mostly because he figured that she believed all the same things that people had told him about this land before he began to cross it—that the nighttime was full of death. Anyone who wanted to live should go to sleep when it got dark and not get up until it was light.

He had believed this, too, at first. It hadn’t exactly been his choice to lie awake at night, unable to sleep. True, he had chosen to open his eyes and see what was out there, but it wasn’t indicative of any kind of death wish on his part. In fact, it wasn’t even really about curiosity, either. He had done it the first time without thought, and by the time he realized what he was doing, the silliness of what he had been told was dawning on him. He wasn’t dying, or experiencing any ill effects of any kind, so he saw no reason to continue the charade.

If he had been alone, Connor reasoned, he would probably even have chanced getting out of his blankets and exploring a bit during the night. He couldn’t tell whether Charlie would take it very well, though, so he decided to forgo any action of that sort. He didn’t feel he knew her well enough to risk asking her about it, though he thought he had heard some hints in their conversation that she might be experiencing something similar to what he’d been going through.

It wasn’t exactly the sort of question you could just throw out there. If he was right, it might be a breakthrough that could help him to figure out what was going on. On the other hand, if he was wrong, he saw three possible outcomes to the situation. She might just laugh it off and not take him seriously, which would get him nowhere, but at least it wouldn’t cause any problems.

It was also possible that she would simply be frightened by such an admission and would part company with him as soon as she could. He didn’t want her to leave, but he wasn’t sure it would be a big deal if she did. Charlie certainly possessed a useful skill set, but he couldn’t imagine why he might need her or her skills.

The third possibility, and the one that really kept him from bringing up his multiple sets of memories, was that she might report him to somebody when they arrived in Varoshan. While they might not take her seriously, he guessed that they probably would. And that would likely result in the Imperial Guard coming after him. From what he had heard, the emperor’s private army didn’t usually have much of a presence here in the outlying regions, but he’d rather not end up on their wanted list if at all possible.

A crude, hand-painted sign marked the edge of the town of Varoshan. They walked past a small house just beyond the sign and noted that what seemed like an unusual amount of noise emanated from inside the little cottage. Connor turned to Charlie and said, “Wonder what’s going on in there.”

Charlie shrugged.

As they passed several more little houses it quickly became apparent that whatever had been happening in that first house was not an isolated incident. After half a dozen similar occurrences, they arrived at one little cottage whose occupant was just leaving.

“Pardon me, sir,” MacManus called to the old man, “but can you tell us what’s happening here?”

“I’m getting as far away as possible, is what’s happening.”

“I can see that,” Connor said, pointing at the loaded pack on the man’s back. “I guess what I really need to know is why?”

“Mazzikim,” he said simply.

“Who’s Mazzikim?” Charlie asked.

“Not so much a ‘who’ as a ‘what’.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Connor said, vaguely amused, but mostly annoyed at the way the conversation was progressing. “What does that mean?”

“Mazzikim are—”

“Earth demons,” Connor said, answering the question he had originally asked.

“Yup,” the man said as Charlie gave Connor a bewildered look. “It’s destroying the town.”

“Well, old man, it looks like you’re in luck,” Charlie said, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a small chuckle.

The man scoffed at her words and gave her a murderous glare. “I don’t see anything lucky about it. I’ve got to leave my home because of that vile…” he trailed off as he looked directly at MacManus for the first time.

Connor had lowered his hood, inadvertently revealing his identity. The man stared at his neck, studying the markings briefly before his eyes darted to Connor’s left hand. As though the truth of Charlie’s words had finally hit him, the man spluttered, “You’re… you’re…”

“Yes, I’m a hunter,” he said.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Go get him!”

MacManus nodded as though he agreed that that was the logical conclusion. “I, uh… where is he?”

“You just head in that direction and you’ll have no trouble finding him,” the old man said, pointing toward the main part of town. “He’s not exactly hiding, you know.”

“What does he look like?” Connor asked.

“How the hell should I know?” the man shot back.

“You mean you didn’t see him?” Connor looked confused.

The old man turned to Charlie, apparently convinced this demon hunter wasn’t playing with a full deck, and said, “Is he serious?”

“I’m afraid so,” she said with a smile, though her reply was solemn.

The old man shook his head in what Connor thought might have been disgust and turned his back on them, heading off in the direction from which Charlie and Connor had entered the town.

Despite his initial hesitation, Connor found that he was suddenly hurrying toward the middle of Varoshan. As they passed increasingly larger houses, Charlie kept pace with him, drawing her bow in preparation for whatever was ahead. The town wasn’t exactly in ruins, but the demon had definitely taken out its frustration on several homes and a few of the public buildings they passed.

They entered the town square and easily deduced that the mazzikim was currently at work inside the town hall. The huge double doors had been ripped from their hinges; one door lay on the steps, splintered and broken, while the other was nowhere in sight.

When he paused to take off his pack, Charlie asked, “What was that back there?”

“What was what?”

“When you asked a question and then answered it yourself.”

“Oh,” Connor shrugged. “I can’t really explain it. It just sort of comes and goes.”

“But—”

He held up a hand to stave off further interrogation.

“Later. Right now, duty calls,” he said. Connor felt a momentary flash of panic and wondered bizarrely whether they shouldn’t just call the police—or better yet, the National Guard—and stay out of it. The thought faded just as quickly, though, and he steeled himself against the impending confrontation.

He drew his katana and went up the steps to the open front of the building. As he looked inside, Connor felt a presence at his side and turned back to see Charlie with her bow in one hand and the other hand pulling an arrow from her quiver.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Seriously.”

“It could be fun,” Charlie winked.

Connor just shook his head and said, “Fine. You want to risk your neck for no good reason? That’s your business. Just know that I may not be able to bail you out if you get stuck.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.”

He didn’t wait to see whether she would speak further in her own defense. He turned and stepped across the threshold. Sidling around behind a long table that had been flipped on its side, Connor finally got his first good look at the earth demon. “Holy shit,” he said. “Look at the size of that thing.”

“I, uh… can’t see it,” Charlie said.

“What are you talking about? It’s right there.”

“It’s a demon hunter thing,” she explained. “The mazzikim are invisible to everyone else.”

Connor was about to argue that that was ridiculous, but then he knew. He knew she was right, just like he had known so many other things he… hadn’t exactly known until the moment when… he did. “Alright,” he said when he had refocused his attention, “if you’re still intent on doing this, just, uh… follow my lead.”

The mazzikim was nearly twice Connor’s height; it looked like a rhinoceros that walked on its hind legs and had opposable thumbs. He stared in awe as the beast effortlessly put its fist through the side wall of the building, a stone wall that was almost two feet thick. The obvious strength of the monster was almost enough to give him second thoughts, but the closer he stepped to it, the more natural the whole situation felt—like he had done it many times before.

Connor moved around, trying to get behind the beast, but he stumbled over the remnants of a broken chair, alerting the mazzikim of his presence. The great, lumbering monstrosity turned around to face him as quickly as any creature of such incredible size can execute an about-face. Connor regained his footing and fixed the beast with a withering stare. The mazzikim glared back from beady little eyes that seemed far too small for such a huge creature.

“Hey, ugly,” he said casually. “You ready to die?”

The beast unleashed a guttural growl that made the walls of the town hall shudder. The mazzikim grasped a cylindrical beam that was more than a foot in diameter and ripped it free from the framework of the building. The roof buckled slightly without the post to support it, but it was only one of the many that held the structure aloft.

“What are you gonna do with that?” Connor asked, almost laughing at the creature’s obvious intention.

There were too many other beams around for the monster to be able to swing it effectively. On the other hand, Connor thought, reflecting on the size of the demon’s arms and what it had already done to the rest of the town, it probably didn’t need much of a swing radius to crush him with the post. No sooner had Connor processed this thought than the mazzikim tried to do exactly that. Fortunately, Connor’s reflexes and speed, as well as the relatively slow speed at which the beast moved, combined to give Connor plenty of time to sidestep the blow.

The beam smashed into the floor, splintering on the stone. The mazzikim raised its damaged weapon over its head, inadvertently jabbing it through the roof. Debris from the wrecked roof rained down on the creature’s head as it made a second unsuccessful attempt to crush MacManus.

“Can you tell where he is from the beam in his hand?” he called back to Charlie.

“More or less.”

“Okay, good. I need to get behind him, but he’s standing too close to the wall,” he said. “Can you draw him away?”

“I don’t know if my arrows can even hurt him,” she said.

“They don’t have to hurt him. They just have to distract him.”

“But what if—“

“It’s not a ghost,” Connor cut in. “Look what he’s doing to the building. He obviously has a physical presence.”

“Yeah, I see that, but—”

He cut her off again. “No time like the present to find out.”

Her response was a volley of three arrows, which she had stacked together on the bowstring and let fly. One hit the monster in the neck, while another caught its upper torso and the third was wide to the left. Despite the fact that they hit the mazzikim with great force, the arrows could not penetrate its hide. The result was the same as it would have been if Charlie had been using blunt-tipped arrows. They simply bounced off and clattered to the flagstone floor.

The arrows’ inability to do any real damage to the demon was irrelevant, however. They accomplished precisely what Connor had hoped for. The mazzikim turned to look for the source of the arrows. Spotting Charlie, who had already nocked another arrow and was taking aim, it started toward her, leaving Connor free to finish the job.

He hurried to the side of the room, behind the beast, and raised the katana above his head. Connor’s actions were purely instinctive as he lined up for the kill. He leapt into the air and landed on the monster’s protruding hip bones. In a split second—once his feet had relatively secure purchase—he plunged the katana into the back of the beast’s neck.

The mazzikim threw its head back and roared. Connor managed to keep his feet as the beast threw him off, but only barely. The creature’s agonized howl increased in volume for several seconds and then stopped. As the mazzikim toppled to the ground Connor’s first thought was for his sword. He hoped it wouldn’t be damaged under the weight of the great monster.

His concern turned out to be in vain, though. The mazzikim hadn’t quite rolled back far enough for the katana’s handle to reach the ground when a loud popping sound, like a huge balloon that had been pricked with a pin, filled the ears of everyone within fifty yards. And then the earth demon was gone. The katana fell to the stone floor as though it had slid off the edge of a table, clanging on the flagstones before it came to rest.

Connor scooped it up and sheathed his weapon with the same calm as a man putting his wallet and car keys in his pocket before he left his house. He went over to Charlie, who seemed equally calm. She had put the last arrow she had drawn back into her quiver and was in the process of putting her bow away when he stopped her. In contrast to most things he had experienced recently, Connor had a clear memory of what would happen next.

“Don’t,” he said. “There may be more.”

“I don’t think so,” Charlie replied knowledgeably. “Mazzikim are confined to regions. There can’t be another one within several hundred miles.”

“Not mazzikim,” Connor corrected.

“Huh?”

When Connor didn’t answer her grunted question, she said, “That was a mazzikim, Con.”

“Never said it wasn’t,” Connor replied.

Charlie sighed and said, “You just—”

He shook his head abruptly, causing her to stop in mid sentence as he realized that she had misunderstood what he said. “I know there aren’t any more mazzikim around, but that’s not what I was talking about. Mazzikim always travel alone, but—”

“The scavengers,” Charlie said, suddenly realizing what she’d been missing.

“Right,” he said.

In contrast to the many things he had been unable to recall right away, Connor remembered that whenever a demon attacked, scavenging beasts would follow in its wake like carrion crows, picking at the remains of the demon’s victims. Both out of respect for the dead, who deserved proper burials, and out of concern for the living who mourned the casualties of the attacks, Connor knew they would need to fight off the scavengers that would surely be coming soon.

“Well, at least I can see them.”

“Good.”

When Connor and Charlie emerged from what was left of the town hall, there were a few people starting to come out of their homes. The crowd grew quickly as people braved the scene outside of their homes, though, and the townsfolk milled about, seemingly unsure about what to do next. Connor wondered if they had seen a demon in their town before today. He guessed that they probably had (or at least knew what happened when demons attacked) because they, too, seemed wary of what else might be in the vicinity.

“Should we say something?” Connor asked under his breath.

Charlie shrugged, surveying the uneasy cloud of worry on every face in the town square. She noticed an old man hobbling forward, leaning heavily on an ornately-carved cane, and nudged Connor. He turned around to see that the old man appeared to be a clergyman of some kind, if his clothing could be taken as any indicator. Connor stepped forward as the man began to speak in a hoarse voice.

“Thank you, hunter,” the man said. “On behalf of all of Varoshan, I thank you. I have lived here since I was just a young lad, and we have been attacked by demons nine times in my seventy-nine years in this town. This, however, is the first time we have been rescued by a demon hunter.”

“It was no trouble,” Connor said honestly. “But I didn’t do it alone.”

The man didn’t acknowledge Connor’s attempt to share the credit, choosing instead to go right on as though no one had spoken. “We usually have to abandon our homes and wait them out. Then we return cautiously to the ruins of our town and begin the rebuilding process, which—thanks to you—will be relatively short this time.”

The old man then introduced himself as Arlen Johnson and explained that he was the parish priest, pointing at the church that sat behind him, just across the square from the town hall. Johnson went on rambling, but no one was paying much attention to him because a boy who looked about ten years old pointed to the northern sky, behind the town hall and shouted, “Look!”

Connor and Charlie whirled in unison but couldn’t see anything due to their proximity to the building. Everyone else turned to look at the same time, and the reactions were varied. Many of the townsfolk screamed and ran for cover, while some appeared too shocked to move. Connor and Charlie moved to where they could see what everyone was looking at.

The first scavenger on the scene was a giant flying rodent, similar in appearance (though not in size) to the bats that Connor remembered from his other childhood in Arizona. This bat looked big enough to pick up a full-grown man and carry him away, but it didn’t resemble the hazy memory of a flying manta ray that he thought he might have imagined a few nights earlier. Though he couldn’t see any corpses from where he stood in the square, Connor did not know whether anyone had been killed by the mazzikim before he and Charlie had arrived. He did know, however, that if the scavengers couldn’t find any dead people on which to dine, they would attempt to attack the live inhabitants of the town.

Before he had a chance to consider what to do about the huge, bat-like creature, Connor heard the twang of a bowstring and watched as an arrow sunk deep into the beast’s chest. Charlie fired a second arrow, just to be safe, and the bat-thing plummeted to the ground.

Connor looked away from the spot where the flier had crashed to see another scavenger coming toward the square. This one was a land-bound creature that Connor couldn’t remember having seen before. His first thought was that it looked a bit like a baby elephant without a trunk. It was surprisingly agile for its size, easily sidestepping the volley of three arrows Charlie fired in its direction. Connor thought it appeared to be heading for the bat carcass, but there were several people between the nimble invader and its intended meal. They must have been frozen in fear because they stood rooted to their places, despite the imminent arrival of the surging animal.

“Get out of here!” the demon hunter shouted (It was unclear whether he was shouting this at the beast or at the people, since the command could have been applied to either.) as he charged forward, heading the creature off before it got to the townspeople.

He slashed at its thick hide with his katana. The blade cut deep into the creature’s flesh and exposed its entrails as the animal staggered and then fell to the ground. He stepped back and looked down at it, almost feeling sorry for the creature before he remembered that it had been about to attack (or at least trample) a crowd of innocent people. They showed no sign that they planned to move, so Connor grabbed two boys who looked to be in their late teens, carrying sticks as weapons.

“Whoa,” he said putting his hands on one shoulder of each young man. “Where are you going with those?”

“To defend our town!” one cried.

“And protect our friends and families,” the second added.

“That’s great,” MacManus said. “And I admire your intentions, but you’ll just get yourself hurt or killed if you try to stop these things with those sticks.”

“But we want to help!” the second protested.

“I know. The best thing you can do to help right now is to get those people,” Con said, pointing at the groups of terrified onlookers, “out of here and to somewhere safe.”

“But no place is safe with those things around,” the first boy argued logically.

“I agree,” Connor said. “But you need to get them out of the way while we take care of these things. Can you do that?”

“Of course, my lord.”

Connor looked at the boy strangely over the title by which he had just been addressed, but thought better of questioning it right then. He made sure the boys knew which people to help out of the square and then returned his attention to the raid.

More of the flying creatures, some like the first attacker, but others of different species, began to fill the sky. Fortunately, Charlie’s supply of arrows, coupled with those of the three local archers who had joined her, seemed to be keeping the air invaders at bay. Satisfied that Charlie had that part of the incursion under control, Connor turned his attention to further attacks on the ground.

There were a handful of different varieties of scavengers flooding the town from the west. Some were intent on attacking the people, though most appeared content to feed on the falling bodies of the flying creatures. Connor discovered that his thought that the first land creature had resembled a baby elephant had been at least half right: similar creatures of much greater size were pouring into the area.

He attacked them in the same way, but quickly discovered that a slash from his katana seemed to have little effect on the mature creatures’ attack, slowing them only a step or two before they continued on. He saw that they weren’t going to stop and knew he needed a better attack.

Gauging the distance they had to travel before they arrived at the people who still hadn’t left the square yet, Connor sheathed his sword and ran to where he had dropped his pack on the town hall steps. He scooped it up and quickly opened the main pouch. He withdrew a deceptively-light, strange-looking hammer, and then ran back into the fray. Marveling at its weight, which should have been much greater, given its appearance, he went straight for the lead elephant-thing and raised the hammer above his head as he ran.

The head of the war hammer looked like a pickaxe on one end, with a beak-like blade that was as sharp as any straight razor. The other side of the head resembled nothing so much as a small anvil. In contrast to a regular hammer or even a sledge, the impact face of the hammer side was coarsely-textured square, measuring slightly more than half a foot on each side. While appearing almost too compact to be effective, the war hammer in that state was actually in disguise.

Connor swung the weapon over his head, and as he did so the handle telescoped out until it was just less than four feet from the base of the handle to the top of the anvil/blade head. He grasped the leather wrap around the base of the shaft and brought the war hammer down on the head of the lead attacker with a sickening crunch. Connor was surprised to discover that the war hammer behaved as though it was much heavier than it felt in his hands, causing precisely the sort of damage he would have expected, based on its appearance, rather than the way it looked like it should feel.

No sooner had he raised the war hammer again than another of the trunkless elephants charged past him. Con took several sprinting steps after the beast and then leapt in to the air with the hammer raised above his head. Unsure of whether he would be able to reach the creature’s head, however, MacManus twisted the war hammer 180° in his hands before he buried the hammer’s beak into the beast just below the base of the skull. The blade must have severed the spinal chord because the elephant-thing went to its knees and the stopped moving almost instantly.

Connor got to his feet and turned to survey the situation, noting that while Charlie and her team seemed to be holding their own, they weren’t really gaining any ground on the airborne scavengers. He also saw that while the few armed men in the town had joined him against the ground attack, they still needed a boost of some kind to help them turn the tide.

As he searched his confused memories for a solution, Connor heard a pair of familiar sounds in the distance. It didn’t take him as long to place these memories as the loud bang echoed through the town square at regular intervals over the next few seconds, together with a heavy, rhythmic, thumping sound. Connor brushed aside the thought, since it seemed so out of place, and took out several more of the land creatures. He noticed immediately, though, that the sky seemed brighter. He looked up to find that the bat-things had finally begun to flee, apparently from fear of whatever was making the new sounds.

As Connor drew his katana again to slash at a quick, catlike creature, his eyes confirmed that his ears had, in fact, accurately identified the sounds as the hoof beats of a horse and the report of a pair of revolvers. The nickel-plated guns barked again in rapid succession and two more scavengers fell.

The timely arrival of this horseman had done what Connor, Charlie, and a handful of the townsfolk had been unable to do: it had finally scared off the invaders. Everyone kept their guard up for the next fifteen or twenty minutes as they walked the entire area to make sure that even the most daring of the scavengers found sufficient motivation to leave them in peace.

When they were finally certain the last of the aggressors had been scared off or killed, Connor approached the man on the horse. The new arrival wore a black hat whose origin seemed distantly familiar in the context of the rest of the stranger’s ensemble. As the man climbed down from the horse, a metallic jangling sound shook Con’s memory once again and the balance of what had hadn’t yet remembered about the man’s clothing fell into place.

He was a cowboy, as strange as that word sounded in Connor’s mind. The boots he wore had… spurs on the back that looked like they belonged in a television show, as Con couldn’t remember ever having seen a real pair before. He wore a shirt that must have been white at some point, though it was closer to brown now, under a dusty black vest. Faded blue jeans fit him like a second skin and were covered by some black leggings whose name eluded MacManus for the moment.

The cowboy pulled down the dark grey cloth that had covered the bottom half of his face as he rode, revealing a week’s growth of beard. He was badly in need of both a haircut and a bath. Connor thought that under the circumstances, however, it would have been inappropriate to comment on the man’s personal hygiene. Instead he held out a hand and said, “Many thanks, stranger,” though even as he said the words it occurred to him that he was as much an outsider here as the cowboy was.

“Think nothin’ of it,” the man said, giving MacManus’s hand a vigorous shake.

“You have impeccable timing,” Connor told the cowboy.

“So the ladies tell me,” was his cocky reply.

Connor gave him an appraising look, unsure of quite what to think. He noticed, upon closer inspection, that the cowboy’s eyes were two different colors—not the slightly-different of a hazel and a grey-green, though. One eye was an unusual, pale silver color, appearing almost metallic within the iris, while the other was as black as coal.

“I am Connor MacManus,” he said, offering a hand.

The cowboy shook it heartily and began to introduce himself, “Kenny—”

“Dodge,” Charlie cut him off from behind Connor.

“Hey, Charlie,” he replied, smiling warmly. “Goodta see ya.”

Connor turned to Charlie and saw a look on her face that told him one fact he might not otherwise have guessed: She clearly did not share Mr. Dodge’s sentiment.