The gates of Kiva Noon were blown wide open. One grinding metal door slumped alongside the great wall, the other was flat on the floor. The dunes leading up to the city were lined with a warning to all. Don’t fuck with the Bone Eaters. Dotted along the dunes leading to Kiva Noon was an army of crucified corpses.

  Lenny ducked beneath a pair of legs that dangled from a crucifix. On the back of the elephant, he was close enough to feel the heat coming off of the dead. He looked towards each of them, their mangled corpses like streamers hanging without the winds of the valley. A vision took hold of him every time he looked into their eyeless sockets and gaping mouths. At first, they looked like his brother, their faces contorted into his likeness. Then, like a festering hive of maggots, they wriggled back into their deadened shapes.

  Shi-Toh held his nose as he walked alongside Bantu. Lenny had never seen the Gordo clan so bothered by bodies. Even their great bird seemed to turn its appetite away from the rotting meal. All of them were following Jackmaw closely, watching the dunes for movement, or booby traps, or even for the corpses to crawl off their posts and descend upon them. Lenny couldn’t know for sure, he could only guess. But the fact remained. They were on edge.

  “Lord?” Shi-Toh said, nasally. “Is it possible we’re too late?”

  It had taken them four days to reach the settlement from the oasis, and it seemed that four days was enough. Lenny had no way of knowing, but the vision he had received was deceptive. While Krav and his group were indeed in Kiva Noon, the battle at the gate had been almost two weeks ago. They were not only too late to receive him, they were too late to stop the razing of the town.

  "Don’t be stupid,” Jackmaw growled. “Of course we’re too late. If we’re lucky, Krav only lost an arm or a leg. Knowing the fucking Bone Eaters though, we might not even find a skeleton.”

  Anger boiled him, and his red skin seemed to stretch and gain a shade of purple. Veins in his chest and neck squirmed as muscles flexed and raged. The entire trip, he had been consumed in conversation about Krav, and Lenny pretended to be too high to reply. Torrents of questions bombarded his ears, and for a time, he answered them. What’s Krav’s favorite food? Meat. What’s Krav smell like? Bad. What’s it like being the brother of the guy who’s going to be the apprentice of the king of the world? Also bad, but he didn’t say that. Instead, he told him it was better to be the war sage, and that was a lie.

  Now it looked like neither of them would get the chance to see Krav.

  As they approached the blown-out gate, shapes could be seen inside the town, moving amongst collapsed tents and burnt wooden shops like ghosts left behind. The clan tensed and refused to enter. The entirety of the Gordo clan was sat at the gates of Kiva Noon, the king of the world at their very backs, and still they twitched. Jackmaw gave the order to a single lieutenant: go check it out. The first mistake the officer made was calling on a group of his subordinates to go with him. It showed a weakness Jackmaw detested. The second mistake was walking into the sacked town of a clan of gear heads.

  They crouched as they went, feather skirts and leather robes dragging in the sand behind them. They looked like colorful ninjas sneaking through the town. Each of them had their eyes on the various piles of rubble, watching for the specters of war. They jumped at wafting smoke and even looked back at Jackmaw like children waiting for permission to continue venturing onward.

  “Why don’t we all go in?” Shi-Toh whispered, and he felt ridiculous for having lowered his voice at all. It was clear they were all going a little insane with withdraw, and the crucified corpses on the way into town hadn’t done much to alleviate that tension. They were all a bit high strung, and the feathered man was smart enough to recognize it. Still, he whispered his words instinctively, like an animal detecting danger. “It’s unlike you to order a reconnaissance mission.”

  Jackmaw watched his team sneaking around like rats, and it disgusted him. His clan was made up of great winged creatures and powerful clawed beasts. He had no time for meager snakes and mice, and that’s exactly what the lieutenant looked like skulking around the ruins. That wasn’t enough to give him a headache, though. No, that right was reserved for Shi-Toh. Jackmaw’s forehead clenched, and he fought the urge to rub his head free of the pain. “It’s Kiva Noon right after an attack. If there are survivors, there’s booby traps all over the damn place. Besides,” he grinned, “Krav’s going to need a pillow to sit on, and Rust has been annoying the fuck out of me.”

  The raider lieutenant, Rust, was a manic looking man. His hair was twisted into twin tails that started at his hairline and braided all the way across his scalp and fell down his neck. He stared with wide eyes over his beak of a nose, and whenever he shivered or jolted, his scrap metal chain mail rattled like a hundred tiny dinner bells. Now he looked even more crazed. His jaw moved back and forth like he was chewing something no one else could see, and he kept pinching his nose as if to wipe an unceasing pool of snot from it. Rust kept looking over his shoulder at Jackmaw, and every time their eyes met, Rust's grew a size until Lenny could see the red veins that swam in them.

  “Get a move on!” Jackmaw screamed, and Rust’s whole group ducked closer to the earth as if his booming voice was an explosion.

  The recon team all looked to Rust, and he swallowed hard before stepping out from his hiding spot. He stayed low to the ground, chainmail ringing out and glinting in the sun. Lenny could see the sweat coming off of him in sheets. The boy was choking on his anticipation, and with how intently he focused on him, he could even smell his fear. It wafted off of him, stinking like a pool of sweat in his collar. It was a smell so primal, it shocked Lenny to perceive it, and that shock sparked another vision. But it was a vision that came too late.

  Before the war sage could warn the lieutenant, Rust stepped on something. There was a heavy click below the sand as if a giant gun had failed to fire. Rust’s whole group felt it tremble underground, but only the lieutenant was affected. Buried in the sand, just like Jackmaw thought, a mine shivered.

  “Lord?” Rust called through missing teeth. His heart raced, Lenny could feel it pounding out of sync with his own heart. The boy had to swallow to keep from throwing up.

  “Has it blown up yet, scab head?” Jackmaw said. He didn’t have a hint of concern in his voice. Instead, he looked bored. “It’s probably a dud. Just keep going.”

  Lenny wanted to warn him. He didn’t understand the machine, and he couldn’t see it clearly in his mind’s eye, but he learned enough from what he could perceive. The device was a disc with some sort of button on top of it. The click was the button being depressed, and Lenny could see that it was just the beginning. He could see a tinder box in the device that was still waiting to be lit, and he suspected that when Rust stepped off of it, the recoiling button would rise and catch fire. But beyond that, Lenny wasn’t sure how it would work. He just had that vision of fire.

  Rust did as his warlord commanded, swallowing hard and lifting his foot. He didn’t even get it off the sand before the explosion sent his body spraying in all directions. The smell of carrion and scorched metal choked the oxygen from the air. Lenny didn’t have time to cover his ears, and he had to clap his hands over them to stifle the ringing pain. The others on the recon team were pushed back by the blast, some getting cut by shrapnel and others getting splashed by Rust’s remains. They clambered back to their master on all fours and only rose to a full sprint when they were close to the gates. But they were being routed by something.

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  The survivors of Kiva Noon were emerging from their hiding spots. They came out of trap doors and secret compartments in the wall itself. Some were buried in the sand outside Kiva Noon, and they flanked the Gordo clan. They drew their unique weapons, swords and spears crafted with the love and care of a master. The Gordo clan reached for their belts, for weapons unfamiliar to the denizens of the valley, but Jackmaw stopped them in their tracks with a sharp whistle.

  “We surrender,” he smiled. He was holding his hands up as if he wasn’t a danger, even unarmed. The rest of the clan watched him with mouths agape. Jackmaw Yapyap didn’t surrender, and neither would the Gordo clan. One member moved to defy him, taking advantage of the momentary confusion, he drew a pistol and aimed it at one of the ambushers. Before either of them could act, Jackmaw drew his flare gun and shot his own man. The fireball sailed into his chest, and he was able to scream for a moment before the flare scorched his lungs and cooked his heart. Then there was silence as they all listened to him crackle. “What part of ‘we surrender’ don’t you scab heads understand?”

  There was method to madness after all. Jackmaw Yapyap was able to show his good faith to the people of Kiva Noon, and he was welcomed as a savior into the town. The Black Thumbs led the Gordo clan through the town, pointing out all the traps they had set just in case the Bone Eaters returned. They were led to Sinestra Mode’s palace, now belonging to no one with its sovereign dead. There, they traded information for some of the preserved fish they had left over.

  A woman with double eye bionics was the informal leader of the survivors. She wore a frayed overcoat that Shi-Toh recognized as previously belonging to the gate guardians. The woman told of how they had issues with the Bone Eaters stemming from a war in which the Black Thumbs supplied their opposition. It came to a head two weeks prior when the clan of cannibals came to the town with a demand for slaves that they had already collected for the month. The day had been eventful enough, what with the return of Albert Greenblatt, their previous warlord.

  She told the story of the battle at the gates and how a crazed boy had turned a duel into a bloody free for all. At the mention of the boy, both Lenny and Jackmaw perked up. Shi-Toh quickly steered the conversation away, asking if there were any girls involved in the altercation. Particularly girls that seemed a bit off. The woman shrugged. She couldn’t remember every face on that dreadful day.

  “What did he look like?” Jackmaw grinned.

  "The boy? He was short. Angry. He had taken a beating in the bar before we arrested him, so I’m afraid I can’t say much about what he looked like before that. He had a lot of scars though. Was he one of yours?”

  No, Lenny thought.

  “Yes,” Jackmaw said.

  “Well, that explains the attitude. I think they ended up going after the Bone Eaters. He was travelling with Greenblatt and another guy from the battle. He had a gold pendant on; I think it was a skull with horns.”

  Shi-Toh frowned and took a cup of wine being offered to him by a lobotomite. He leaned towards Jackmaw and whispered, “Pit Lords. That sounds like the mark of one of their executioners.”

  For once, the man’s voice didn’t sound like nails on a chalkboard. Instead, they floated to Jackmaw like they had been whispered into his very dreams on a stream of honey. It was another clue to his prize, and a damn good clue too. “You said they went after the Bone Eaters?”

  “Yes. We offered up their belongings to the clan as well, and the battle ended with the Bone Eaters retreating with as much as they could carry. Supposedly, the bag of belongings had something important to the boy.”

  Jackmaw’s mask stretched with a smile. Not only had the boy started a giant brawl, but he had also sent a gang of warriors running for the hills; and then he chased them for karma’s sake! It had been almost a month since they met, and already the warlord was impressed with news of the boy. Then he asked about the crucifixes. If they really had gone after the Bone Eaters, surely the attacks they faced now were evidence enough that the group had failed in their endeavor.

  “I would agree, but these attacks are made in anger. I’ve only seen vindictive animals fight like that. And they haven’t wiped us out yet. I think something struck a nerve. If they had simply killed the three of them, they wouldn’t be retaliating as hard as they are now.”

  “Do you have anything that belonged to them?” Shi-Toh asked. “Our war sage may be able to track them.”

  The bionic eyed woman scrutinized Lenny with crimson lenses. The answer looked like a yes, but a reluctant one. The woman snapped her fingers at one of the puppet-corpses and after a brief command, it left and returned with a blade. “This was used to kill our warlord. We believe it belongs to Greenblatt.”

  Lenny saw it, ornate and emanating a powerful aura. It was coated in a mixture of anguish and relief that looked to match the red eyed woman’s feelings on her warlord’s death. Sinestra Mode was loved, that much was clear by the intense pain of the thing. But that relief felt like releasing a cable that was digging into your palm. It was the kind that replaced one heartache for another. He was afraid to touch it.

  She handed him the blade under the expectant gazes of Jackmaw Yapyap and Shi-Toh. As soon as his fingers grazed it, he saw the image of the sarcophagus. Krav wasn’t anywhere to be found, but he saw Greenblatt, and suddenly he realized where he knew the name from. The thin merchant from Agua Fria who had been so kind to Rufus as to offer him treatment was sitting in the machine holding a wraith of a woman.

  She looked like a ghost swimming in a fishtank, and the smile she had twisted Lenny’s chest into tight knots. Greenblatt held her like she could have been his newborn daughter or terminal mother. He could feel the spark between them, and he realized they were lovers. Lenny had never felt such an aching well in his chest as he did when watching the two exchange one last loving look, then Greenblatt dragged the knife across her neck. It was too much for the boy, and he dropped the knife to the floor.

  “I saw him kill her,” he whispered. That was all he could bear to say on the matter. “I don’t know where they went.”

  The woman nodded and was kind enough to stoop to pick up the knife. “I see. I’m sorry we couldn’t be of more help, Lord Jackmaw.”

  The warlord waved her off and pulled Shi-Toh aside to discuss something privately. Lenny looked around the palace and saw the sarcophagus behind a throne. Someone had taken the time to clean it of the corpse, but he could see its aura. The device was like a prison for negativity, and it soaked into its cables and sprockets. It wafted from the open lid like mustard gas rising from a trench. He felt it from all the way across the room. Lenny noted it and promised himself he’d stay as far away from the device as possible.

  When Jackmaw and his consul returned, they had reached some sort of agreement. It was a rare sight, but both of them were smiling as they talked with the bionic eyed woman. They had an offer. The Gordo clan would wipe out the cannibal cult of the Bone Eaters. Every last one would be food for their mega vulture, and the heads of their champion and warlord would be brought back as proof of demise. In return, the survivors of Kiva Noon would work to create something called Ammo.

  Shi-Toh removed a small device from his belt and seemed to disassemble it. Lenny had never seen him use it, but all of the Gordo clan had one. They were the terrible weapons used in the attack at Agua Fria, the ones that exploded small holes into people. Jackmaw called them pistols, but he had heard them referred to as blinkers, smokers, pipes, and lead-launchers by the other raiders. Lenny only knew that they were the weapons that made people explode. Shi-Toh ejected something from his pistol, then dug out a small piece of it. The shiny brass piece was the size of the tip of his finger, and he seemed a bit reluctant to hand it over. That piece was what they called Ammo, and it seemed to be an important part of the weapon.

  She turned it over in her hands a few times, the bionic lenses dilating and zooming to gather as much information as possible. Then she nodded and handed the piece to one of her lobotomites. “I’ll pass this along to the fabricators we have left. Lucky for you, some talented individuals survived the constant raids. We have a deal, Lord.”

  The woman reached her hand up to Jackmaw, and the smiling devil took it. If there ever was a deal struck with literal demons, it was done there between the survivors of Kiva Noon and the king of the world himself. In that one gesture of camaraderie, Lenny saw a mountain of corpses. The echo of a thousand lost souls sounded off the halls of the palace as if to protest their union, but their pleas only fell on Lenny’s ears in wails. The boy’s head swam with visions of war, of the chaos between Gordo and Bone Eater alike. He saw Jackmaw Yapyap covered in viscera, dripping red from head to toe; and of course, he was smiling. The only time he seemed genuinely happy was when he was causing pain, and this pain was unimaginable.

  The boy wiped a storm of sweat from his head, then vomited. It would be a long time before he could see Krav.