CWD: GA ~ Thirty-Eight

Nacho knew he was dreaming, but he couldn’t wake himself up. A man in sunglasses stood in the middle of the game trail, dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and a leather jacket. He wore a long, sheathed katana strapped to his side, and even if Nacho hadn’t already known who it was, the sunglasses were a dead giveaway to what he was. The cook gulped and prayed that the man wouldn’t have that particular sword in this version of the Juxtaposition: it was pure evil.

“Arriodd. I’m not going to let you destroy my people again.” There was no mistaking the identity of the CrossHuman, and the minute Nacho was hit with that realization, he was jolted awake. The night’s fire had reduced to a pile of gray ashes next to him. Reuben was awake, packing up his stuff, but Brie wasn’t in sight. They’d let him sleep through his watch, which he was both grateful for—as well as a little peeved.

“Where’s Brie?” Nacho wanted them all together. His dream of Arriodd couldn’t be a good thing. He didn’t think the CrossHuman could’ve shown up in the AKC this early in the game, but he could always be wrong. There was a lot about the CrossHumans that people didn’t understand.

Reuben frowned at him. “Brie went out hunting. She should be back any minute. Don’t worry, she took one of your ‘pocket pancakes’ with her.”

“Ugh, I was just carrying them. That’s what everyone is going to call them forever, isn’t it?” Nacho ignored the nodding and packed everything he had, then made the Healer start moving; refused to wait for Brie to return. He tracked her down and led her back to the ashes of their fire, sighing a breath of relief when the three of them were back together again. He wasn’t going to be able to relax until they reached Armor Mountain. “We cannot be separated right now. We have people after us, the Bove is on the loose, and we are not safe. We need to stay together and stay sharp.”

“I know that you are trying to come from a good place, but we are adults,” Brie informed him primly, greatly annoyed that her hunt had been interrupted. She strapped on her gear and headed down the trail, taking the lead with her hammer thrust through some straps on her backpack while carrying the bow and arrow. Falling back into their established pattern, Nacho followed her, and Reuben took up the rear guard.

They walked until noon that day without incident. The sun at its peak cast a golden light through the trees as shriveled autumn leaves spun off branches to float to the ground. The dead foliage gave the forest a fragrance as much as the slightly damp dirt under their boots… and also made a crunching sound whenever it was stepped upon.

When someone *crunched* out of the forest in front of them and moved to stand on the game trail, Nacho felt the hair on the back of his head rise. There, standing right in front of them, was the figure he’d seen in his dream. Jeans, boots, and leather jacket, every stitch the same. This guy had a leather satchel hanging off his back, and a sword hung at his side that wasn’t the katana. The cook held up a hand, his mouth dry as he whispered, “Stop, Brie.”

It might not be Arriodd… but it was. Of course it was, even this early in the game. The dream must have come from Kronos. Arriodd moved and Nacho flinched, but the disguised CrossHuman only lifted his hand and waved.

Reuben waved back. “Hey. Nice day for a walk. I’m Reuben.”

“Hi, Reuben.” The figure’s voice was exactly as the former Assassin remembered. Nacho couldn’t move, couldn’t think; he felt his mind fracture into a million pieces. He thought he’d have months—if not years—before they had to deal with the CrossHumans. That still might be the case, but this encounter didn’t make it seem likely.

Brie immediately saw the problem, while her amiable fiancé was clueless. She whispered her worry under her breath, keeping her eyes ahead. “Why the sunglasses? They’re cheap in the Store, but it's not that bright out.”

Reuben moved to walk by Nacho, but the cook pulled the big guy back. “Don’t. We don’t want to mess with that guy. He’s not human. That’s Arriod.”

The figure overheard the hushed comment and started. He reached up and touched his sunglasses, “We’ll need to have a conversation another time.”

He then laughed incredulously and turned on his heel to leave the path—the crunch of the leaves giving away his trajectory. From every indication, he made his way farther west. Soon, the sound of his passing faded away.

Nacho sniffed the air to see if he could smell a portal—they always produced a strong chemical smell, like sulfur mixed with ammonia used for cleaning a slaughterhouse’s floor. Light was also involved, and lots of noises; essentially, exactly like anyone might expect of a magical portal to another world. Only, he didn’t think there was a portal on this side of the AKC. The one existing portal he recalled was by the Muddy River to the east.

“Give me the bow,” Nacho ordered quietly. “Be ready. He might not be alone. This close to the start, he might just be acting as a scout. At least… that’s what he was last time. As far as we knew, Arriodd got his start on this world as a scout, but he was someone incredibly important in his world. At least he didn’t have the katana yet.”

“This is something you need to explain.” Once Brie handed over the bow and the quiver of arrows, she adjusted her helmet and took a fresh grip on her hammer. “What are you not telling us, Nacho?”

“Or haven’t told us?” Reuben snapped his fingers. “This is about the… CrossHumans, right? You mentioned something about them a while back. Nacho, what’s going on?”

“Let’s just listen and be ready. Talk when safe.” Nacho tried to get his friends to listen as hard as he was. He probably shouldn’t have been freaked out, because Arriodd couldn’t be that high of a level yet, not even if he’d gone on a killing spree like Crave had. Still, Arriodd eventually became a terror to everyone in the AKC, and his feats had been as legendary as the Bove, though that took place much later on.

Had Arriodd been on their Starter World all that time? Probably not. Nacho suspected the man typically moved from world to world when things got dire, or when he could cash in on all the credits he gathered from killing people… while taking their bodies back to make sure that his people were well-fed.

No one came at them. If Arriodd was traveling with a group of other CrossHumans, they were going about an ambush all wrong. Regardless, Nacho wanted to get to Armor Mountain now more than ever. “Let’s move. Keep your eyes and ears open. If we do get attacked by someone in sunglasses, they’re not human.”

“How do you know?” Brie demanded of him in a low tone.

Reuben attempted the answer. “Something with the eyes. Snake eyes? Tell me they’re at least part snake.”

“Close but no cigar.” Nacho gripped the bow warily while Brie stood in front of him, and Reuben behind. “There’s only one physical difference that we know of: humans have round pupils, and the CrossHumans have pupils in the shape of—you guessed it—a cross. They come from the Cross World, which is their version of our Starter World. You always wondered why it was called the Juxtaposition? Well, this is a fantasy world juxtaposed with the Cross World. Humans versus CrossHumans pitted against each other in a game to the death.”

“Let me guess… you can eat the CrossHumans.” Brie shook her head at yet another little horror that was playing out in her mind unbidden. “Things get bad here, at least we can go through portals to this other world, hunt them, and eat them instead of humans?”

Nacho laughed darkly at that thought. “Not to paint too rosy a picture for you, but the CrossHumans did most of the hunting. They seem to have a better idea of what’s going on than we do. If that joker in the sunglasses is who I think he is… that’s Arriodd, leader of a guild on Cross World that found success with hunting and killing humans in staggering numbers.”

“Seems like something you’d warn us about right away,” Reuben stated, his tone as close to accusatory as it had ever sounded.

“I didn’t say anything because…” The cook winced and forced the words out. “It was why I was killed. I was the sacrificial lamb that allowed two guilds to join. Crave’s Final Victory, and a woman named Kala, who created the Gorged Guild. She changed the name of her guild once the food situation became clear. They had to join together because Arriodd was doing such a bang-up job with his… hunting. Humanity was already on the edge of extinction. There’s a lot I haven’t been able to tell you. So… so many terrible things. I had a good reason. How do you explain to your friends that Humanity as a whole only has a little more than three years left, unless things change drastically?”

“You… do your best not to tell them and just try to make life as different as possible.” Brie engaged in some uncharacteristic sympathy and attempted to change the subject on his behalf. “Cross-hatched pupils. Hashtag pupils. This is so weird and nerdy.”

“Just crosses, not pound signs.” Nacho rolled his own normal eyes. “Where did that even come from?”

“Portals to another world?” Reuben's laugh was quiet, like he was afraid to be heard. Both friends were taking Nacho’s fear seriously, to his relief. “That’s kinda perfect. I mean, we get the fantasy tropes here on Starter World, and that should include portals. I’m so glad I’m getting my money’s worth. Did you ever go to the other side, Nacho?”

“No,” he admitted easily. “To be honest, I never wanted to. It was pretty clear the CrossHumans might’ve been cannibals before the Juxtaposition. They seemed to have zero problem eating near-CrossHuman flesh. As far as we could ever tell, we're exactly the same, except for their pupils.”

The Dinner Party got moving in earnest, arriving at Armor Mountain in the late afternoon. They found the entrance to the Deep Buggy Darkness just as they’d left it, sealed up tight.

Nacho briefly considered staying in the antechamber for the night, but he knew they couldn’t. Time was short, and he had to warn Mayor Dan’s people about the current triplet of threats: Arriodd, the Bove, and Crave, eventually known as the ABCs of terror for people living in the AKC.

They trekked their way around to the front of the big slab of limestone on the east side of the mountain, which was where they found a man stationed up top next to a shoddy brick wall. A rope ladder was rolled up next to him.

Nacho waved. “Hey, guard, we’re here to see Mayor Dan and Taye. Can you throw down the ladder?”

The guard’s face came into view, a middle-aged woman with a nose like a knife blade. Nacho had to do a double take, realizing with a sinking gut that his day of being visited by the past wasn’t over. There stood Kala; the same woman who would start the Sunrise Brigade Guild, which would eventually become the Gorged Guild.

Crave might have done the actual work, but it was Kala who had ordered Nacho’s death.