26 – The Brier Patch

Erika leaned out the window of the moving SUV, squinting through the violet glitter. She could almost see that deep red sun hanging over the distant mountain. Uncountable flickers of shadow soared over the bramble patch, doing their best to blot out the sun where the glitter failed.

Armed with her bat in one hand and gun—loaded with regular bullets—in the other, Erika gnawed on the corner of her lip. “You can’t reapply this misty stuff? Cast the spell again?” she asked as she tried to figure out a way to solve the problem herself.

Theoretically, she could break the concept of flight and send them all crashing into the thorny brambles below. Erika usually let instinct guide her hand when it came to more abstract problems—such as breaking the ██████ of Maggots—but she was coming up blank here. If she hit a bird in the wing, it would work, but only for that bird; she hadn’t broken the concept of motherhood, after all. Widening the effect wasn’t a good idea, even if she knew how.

Sending every bird crashing down, not to mention planes, insects, and whatever else flew, would be a disaster.

If she could only target one bird, she might as well break it, not its flight.

“You are accustomed to isolation, Agent?” The Hermit asked. Since enacting the cover over the vehicles, she had not touched her pipe. “Perhaps you feel you must do everything on your own?”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You came to us seeking allies for your plight,” The Hermit said, more focused on her long, violet nails than on the situation outside. “Do you believe those allies have been idle?”

Erika narrowed her eyes. Obviously, they wouldn’t be idle, even if she hadn’t seen them do anything beyond The Hermit’s shield. The question was either rhetorical or a trap. Either way, it needed no response. “I’m trying to figure out how I can help,” Erika said instead.

“By asking me to work another miracle?”

“By evaluating our options.” Erika turned away from The Hermit, looking over the others in the car.

“She’s got a point,” Anna said, keeping her shotgun at the ready, carefully aiming it away from anyone else in the car. Having seen her load up those electric-blue shells, Erika wasn’t sure that it would help much if she had a misfire.

“Who?” Rick asked, fiddling with his new and improved talisman. “Eri—The Agent or The Hermit?”

“Both, I suppose. I’d like the situation a whole lot better if I knew what everyone else was doing. But—” Anna cracked her neck. When she did so, something shifted in her eyes. They grew, slightly, and the color of her irises shifted like a blue lens slid down over her brown eyes. “We aren’t stumbling about, throwing crucifixes and holy water around on our own.”

“Look,” The Adjustment said, leaning out the rear window. “You can see The Art getting ready.”

Erika followed The Adjustment’s spindly finger to find The Art climbing atop the car ahead. Instead of her usual high-quality glossy porcelain body, she wore some flimsy plastic. Like an overgrown Barbie doll with joints. “She’s going to get snatched up by a bird.”

“I think that’s the point,” The Adjustment said with a laugh. Her long spindly claws crunched the fiberglass of the roof as she pulled herself up to sitting on the window. “Hermy, how long before they break through?”

“A minute. Less, even.”

“Great!” The Adjustment flipped herself up and out of the vehicle. Two thumps dented the roof where she landed.

Rick looked over Anna as she took a few practice aims outside the window, testing how fast she could lean out, fire, and pull back inside. He looked over to Delilah and said, “Should we…”

Delilah sat, one step away from catatonia, mumbling to herself… or to Nya. Both, maybe.

“Never mind,” Rick said.

“Melee specialties won’t be much use while we’re moving, but we will likely need protection once we arrive at our destination,” The Hermit said, frowning at her emptied pipe. She started fishing around in her kimono, grasping around her waist. She pulled out a small baggie of blue-tinted twigs, resembling the needles of a pine tree. “This smells vile,” she muttered as she stuffed some into the bowl of her pipe.

She seemed to have a little trouble lighting it. A snap of her fingers sparked a small flame, but it went out after a second. She tamped it down, then sparked it again. Despite her complaint, she took a slow, gentle draw, tasting the smoke for a long moment before finally exhaling a murky blue smoke.

Violet smelled like cinnamon, but Erika found the blue tasted of garlic.

“Agent, your purpose here is not to fight, is it?” The Hermit said, murk curling from her nostrils as she spoke. “You’ve got a grander part to play.”

A bird punched through the violet smoke as she spoke. It dive-bombed the lead SUV, but a loud crack sent it crashing to the glassed ground underneath.

A few other shadows dove down to follow their fellow, but the shadows got lost in the violet fog. One veered off to the side, crashing into the brambles with audible squawks of pain while the others shrank back, gaining altitude once again.

“So am I supposed to sit back, maybe take a little nap while I wait?” Erika said, not bothering to hide her scorn. “Twiddle my fingers while everyone else fights?”

“Do as you will,” The Hermit said. She coughed lightly, demurely, with a much heavier cloud of thick blue smoke filling the SUV’s cabin. “Just remember that you are destined for another task; do not waste yourself on other matters if you would fail to achieve it.”

Erika couldn’t argue against that without sounding whiny—or without winding up in a coughing fit of her own. The stench of garlic filled the SUV, resistant to being sucked out the open windows. Erika wafted her hands back and forth, trying to ward it off.

It finally started to thin out thanks to Rick digging a large manila folder out from somewhere in the back. He used it as a far more effective fan than her hands.

“I’ll just have to…” Erika trailed off, blinking twice.

As the smoke cleared, she realized that The Hermit disappeared, leaving behind a vacant passenger seat.

“Well… fuck you too then,” Erika grumbled, glaring at the empty spot.

A second bird crashed through the barrier as soon as she spoke. Another gunshot took it out, but the other soaring shadows on the violet shield followed after it, diving downwards. A few swerved off, lost in the fog, but another got through, then another, and another.

Each one that punctured through thinned out the barrier, letting more and more through.

Talons grasped hold of the open window next to Erika. A beak swiveled, twisting upside-down as it peered its beady eyes into the SUV.

“Father Mould will save all—”

Thin white webs looped around its neck, forming a noose. One swift yank wrenched it off the side of the van and into the wall of thorns.

“They all talk now?” Anna muttered, pumping her shotgun to chamber the first shell.

“Seems that way.” Erika almost made a quip, but her eyes widened as Rick grasped hold of his sword. A bead of sweat dribbled down the side of his face as he inched his finger toward the latch that kept the blade in its scabbard. “Wait!” she barked, reaching her hand over the back of the seat, clamping her hand around its hilt.

He jolted back, inadvertently teleporting the sword out of her grasp and into his ready stance—as much as he could have a stance while seated.

Erika let out a small breath, seeing its sheath still in place. “Maybe,” she started, “—and I don’t mean to say I don’t trust The Warrior’s talisman—but maybe we don’t use the sword inside the cramped vehicle.”

Despite looking a little relieved at her suggestion, he shot her a tight grin and said, “And just twiddle my fingers?”

“Like The Hermit said, there will be other opportunities.”

A roaring boom sounding like a thousand thunderbolts striking at once cut off any thought of a snarky response. Anna flung back from the bark of her shotgun, striking the frame of the window hard enough to put a dent in it.

“Fucking fuck,” she hissed.

Rick’s hand was on her shoulder immediately, steadying her as she leveled her shotgun through the window again. “I thought The Castle gave you six million dollar muscles?”

“Super strength doesn’t mean shit if I don’t have leverage,” she snapped back, bracing her back against the car’s frame this time.

Erika barely snapped her adaptive ear protection over her head before she fired again. The headphones blissfully muted the thunder, but still let her hear the squawking of another bird as it forced its way in through The Hermit’s window.

“Join us in the—”

Erika slammed her fist into its face, collapsing it in on itself. “I think I liked them better before they preached—” She ground her teeth, grunting as she slammed her elbow into another bird.

Much like Rick’s sword, her bat just wasn’t wieldy enough.

Chaos swept through the convoy. Crackles of gunfire, distant enough to avoid triggering the ear protection’s damper, began without pause. The Fool’s rock golem ripped a chunk of thorny vines away from the brier patch, which it swung like a whip. Shortly after The Art got carried away by a bird, the birds began fighting each other high overhead.

The drivers kept the column moving. The cars slowed, some more than others, but they did not stop. The Emperor blasted the way forward, clearing birds and bramble with her fiery breath.

“Thought you said they would thin out,” Erika ground out with a glare at Delilah, leaning back in her seat to kick a bird off the side of the car.

Half the birds showed up to yap at her. The rest clawed and bit and stabbed their bladed wings the moment they got near.

“What I said is correct, they have diminished.”

Erika whipped her head around. Anna leaned out the window, firing off another thunderstorm from her shotgun. Between them, Delilah sat, far too calm to actually be Delilah.

“Nya. Nice of you to join us again,” Erika hissed through clenched teeth as she fanned her bat outside the window.

“D passed out once more. It is odd. She never was this… fragile back with the cult.”

“Did the cult—” Erika jabbed her bat forward, breaking the skull of a bird pecking through the windshield. “—have many monsters?”

Nya paused to consider, giving a lot more thought to her answer than Erika felt her question needed. “No. None.”

“There you go. While you’re here, where is the Carrion—”

A bird crashed into the driver’s side of the van, rocking it up on two wheels. Erika half flew over Nya, almost bumping Anna out the window. Grasping hold of Anna barely kept her inside long enough for the SUV to land back on all its tires. Erika let out a loud grunt as Anna landed on top of her, but a surge of adrenaline kept her from feeling any pain—glass shattered as the bird pecked through the only rolled-up side window, forcing the driver to swerve off to the side.

Despite the jostle, Anna moved faster than Erika did. Her arms twisted unnaturally, bringing her long shotgun around to aim at the bird.

She did not fire. Her finger moved off the trigger, wavering in the air like she still might fill the van with the thunderous electroshot.

The bird stabbed at the driver, shearing a bronze feather into his arm. He shouted in pain, leaning as far from the window as possible, but kept his other hand on the wheel.

Erika struggled out from under Anna so she could break the bird, but a noise from Nya made her pause.

Delilah’s features turned dark—an obsidian, shadowy dark—featureless save for bright red eyes and a grin that stretched from ear to ear. Delilah’s teeth were gone, with white ivory razors interlocking in their place. The razors split apart as Nya opened her mouth and immediately clamped it shut.

A shockwave rocked the car again, throwing Anna off Erika, as the bird, the SUV’s door, and even a chunk of the ground all vanished with a thunder that rivaled Anna’s gunshots.

Nya slurped. Her bright red tongue whipped over her shadowy face.

In the blink of the eye, Delilah returned, fully normal with the exception of her eyes—black, but filled with fear. She wavered in her seat, hand pressed to her forehead, only to jolt when she spotted the missing side of the van. “Wh—What happened?”

“That’s my fucking question,” Erika ground out as she clambered over Delilah.

“Did… Did she eat the bird?” Rick asked.

“Fuck if I know,” Anna snapped. She started to aim back toward her window, only to pause. “Fuck. Driver’s hurt.”

“I can manage,” he ground through grit teeth.

“That’s adrenaline or shock talking and I don’t trust either.” Anna glanced over him as Erika bashed down another bird. “Rick, climb over the seats. Sit in his lap if you have to, just get control. Delilah—” Anna snapped her fingers in Delilah’s face. “Get out of the way for Rick, then help me drag this guy into the passenger seat. Erika—”

“Bit busy.” With half the van now open to the air, Erika was their best defense. She swatted down a bird with her bat, knocking it into another. Hand gripping the driver’s seat for stability, Erika leaned out, getting a glimpse of the chaos outside.

A veritable war raged between the birds and the assembled unnaturals. The SWAT team, lead by The Hanged Man, sat half out from windows of two of the vans, focused on targets of importance. Anything that threatened the forward momentum of the convoy got a single bullet between the eyes. One aimed in Erika’s direction, likely for the bird that had nearly taken out their driver, but he pivoted the moment her eyes locked onto his mirrored goggles.

Leslie sat on a window, strapped to the van with a harness. He had his gun out, but he didn’t fire wildly, letting the SWAT team handle the masses. Only when something got near the front two vans did he aim and remove the threat.

The Aeon swooped overhead, flinging massive boulders through the air with his copy of the golem’s strength, knocking down dozens of birds with each throw. Two cars back, The Adjustment looped a strand of webbing around one bird’s talon, lassoing the other end to a passing thorn, yanking the bird off the car. With the sheer number of birds, more than a few got caught in the sticky strands, trapped as the caravan moved, only to be encompassed by a billowing cloud of black smoke coming from the rearmost SUV.

For a moment, Erika thought the black smoke came from The Hermit’s pipe, until she caught a glimpse of The Lust dancing in her revealing clothing on the hood of the vehicle. Any bird that touched the smoke started withering, flesh shriveling up and bronze corroding away. Black hair-like tendrils swayed in the air like the tentacles of a sea anemone. They dragged anything that came too close into the smoke.

Erika didn’t get a chance to find out where The Hermit had gone, or what anyone else was doing. The birds spotted the weakness in the caravan and dived toward her en masse.

Bladed feathers fired out like flechettes, forcing her to duck back as they plinked against the van’s roof. The opening bought a perch on the open side of the car, but Erika bashed down the bird before it could peck at Rick as he steered the van.

A low, bass rumble that Erika felt in the pit of her chest shook the ground and rattled through the brambles. The birds, mid-dive veered off. The sky overhead cleared. Even those caught in a brawl stopped fighting and started struggling to get away.

“N-Nya says… we should have room to move around.”

Erika turned back, glaring at Delilah. The girl had her hands pressed against the driver’s shoulder, trying to staunch the bleeding. “What does…” She trailed off as that rumbling grew in intensity.

In the distance, far ahead of the convoy, the mountain shifted. Boulders the size of buildings broke away, rolling down the sides with delayed cracks of thunder as the entire mountain tilted.

Except, it wasn’t tilting—the mountain split apart at a seam, opening to a massive cavern as its true shape took form. Two wings formed the mountain, the body of a gargantuan avian contained within. One single eagle eye mounted on an angled head swiveled like it had been knocked dizzy, only to focus down on the ant-like convoy.

Ripping her eyes from the massive beast, Erika grasped for the driver’s radio. “Emperor!” she shouted. “Clear as much space as possible.”