We walked for two more days, keeping a very good pace with the Entombed in their armor, Nix being a skilled undertaker, and myself able to have walked for days at a time without stopping, but in less of a rush considering what was waiting for me. The conversation had died down a bit after my brief discussion the first night, and everyone’s guard was up more because of it, but I found that to be more of a positive than anything. With a lack of conversation and being forced to rest at night by everyone else’s pace, I wound up having an unusual amount of time for myself. Once I’d utterly exhausted myself thinking of every possibility of what could be waiting for me in Pott’s, I had nothing left to do, but read.

I was finally able to turn my attention to ‘Gavain and the Immortal Empire’. In the course of the trip I read it cover to cover on the first night after finishing off the skewers Daisy had made. Then I read it a second time the next night, and twice more the night after that, this time focusing on certain sections more heavily and skimming through the rest. After all of my re-reads I came to a conclusion I almost couldn’t believe. ‘Gavain and the Immortal Empire’ was the worst piece of shit book to ever exist on the face of Earth. Everyone who read it, was almost certainly poorer for the experience, and perhaps dumber and of worse character than they had been prior to reading it. Favorite characters that had existed since book one were killed off, their roles replaced with two dimensional stand-ins that could be described in such original terms as, ‘elf with a bow’, ‘dwarf with an axe’, or ‘halfling that steals’. Old plots were left to rot, and new plots introduced and resolved out of nowhere, romance featured heavily in a way that made no sense for Gavain, and worst of all, at the end of the book, in spite of what the cover implied, Gavain who’d been born and lived as a lizard man, was made human… and he was happy about it. That went against the theme, character, and overall point of the books.

It was so terrible, that in a way, the failure of it, was in and of itself, incredibly fascinating. Between reads I wondered what could have possibly led to such a decline in quality and storytelling. It was truly amazing, and in a way all of the negatives about it made it impossible to put down. At the end of my last readthrough before making it back to Pott’s, I simply slipped it into my pack. I had been searching for that book since I’d first left Pott’s to be on my own. It was, in many ways, the only true ambition I’d had beyond survival before I’d become a Marshal. Had I gotten it before, it would’ve been devastating, now it was… deeply unfortunate, but livable.

The Entombed were talking excitedly about the upcoming presidential debate when the Domes of Pott’s began to come into view. I smelled something strange. The smell of deadmen, mint, bloodmanes, was there as usual, but there was something else. I smelled humans, and exhaust. It wasn’t coming from Pott’s, but rather from behind us, and it was approaching quickly. I whipped around to see three shrikes flying low and fast directly toward Pott’s.

“Nix! Behind us, in the air!” I yelled.

She whipped around to look in the direction I’d indicated. Without my sense of smell, and with the silence in which the Shrikes flew, it took her longer to pinpoint them than I’d like, and by the time she saw them, it was almost too late.

“Entombed, draw weapons and fire!” she said, pointing at the oncoming vehicles.

They listened and followed their orders with as much speed and discipline as they could muster. They opened fire with their weapons, and sent blasts of red light in the direction of the oncoming vehicles.

I watched in frustration, weaponless and unable to see the pilots and use my Freeze ability, as the Entombed fired, the shrikes taking evasive action, two of them avoiding damage, while one of them began to make its way quickly toward the ground after it was clipped by a hydra blast.

As they flew over us, I realized why they were flying so low. Slung to their underside, were what looked to be massive cannons, weighing them down, or perhaps they needed to be low to be within an effective range to use them.

We began running after the vehicles, the Entombed still firing at them. Our actions must have roused the city’s defenders as well, because our own las-fire was joined shortly after by fire coming from the city itself. They managed a few hits on the Shrikes, but didn’t manage to bring them down before they reached the city.

I saw, felt, and smelled the activation of the Shrike’s weapons. Burning ozone, white hot beams of light, and enough power to make the ground tremble hit me all at once. I pushed myself to run further as I watched their beams of light cut straight lines through Pott’s as they reached it. Screams rang out from the city, and I found myself running with such speed that only Daisy, her power armor groaning with the effort, was barely keeping up with me. I noticed the Shrikes turning for another pass, and quickly scrambled onto the nearest dome, gesturing for Daisy to follow me.

I turned to her. “Throw me!” I yelled.

She regarded me with a silent stare from behind her floral facemask, then she kneeled, making a foothold with her gauntlets.

The Shrike was nearly at us when she threw me. Her timing was perfect, and the front of the shrike slammed into the front of me with the force of a train. I kept just enough of my consciousness to grip the edges of the glass just in time for the shrike’s pilot to begin weaving madly in an attempt to remove me. Once I had a grip, I activated my Handle with Care ability to stay in place until I healed and regained enough focus to see the pilot, just in time for him to jerk his flight control upward and start sending us hurtling into the sky.

I smashed my hand into the glass in front of the cockpit. It was reinforced, capable of withstanding bullets, or even small explosions. It took three hits for me to break it completely. I could feel the oxygen thinning around me as I reached into the cockpit and tore the pilot from his seat, throwing him out and hearing him scream as he plunged downward at a rapid clip. I fell into the cockpit, the Shrike still climbing into the air and pushed the controls vaguely downward. I had no idea what I was doing, but at least that control seemed vaguely intuitive.

There was a terrible moment of weightlessness, then I was moving down toward the ground, fast. Pott’s went from vaguely city shaped to well detailed in moments, and I started to pull up the stick, hearing the machinery involved creak in the first sounds I’d ever heard in a Shrike. I saw the last one doing another pass with its laser below me, and I jerked the flight stick one last time. I could swear I saw the last pilot look up and scream, after that everything was a blur of fire, and metal as we collided and everything spun in my vision.

I blacked out, but only for a moment, then I opened my eyes and tried to get my bearings. There was a large piece of metal impaling my leg to the ground, and my arm to what remained of someone’s home. I saw a few deadmen approach me, one of them, a woman, came closer than the others.

“Don’t move. We have help on the way, I’ll divert them to you.”

Her voice was breaking a bit as she spoke. I pegged her as someone who likely hadn’t left Pott’s before. I respected that she’d tried to comfort me in spite of her obvious fear. She probably just thought I was a random resident.

I shook my head at her. “Don’t waste their time with me.” I yanked my hand downward, feeling my arm tear open deeply. It re-knitted itself shortly after, and I sat up to rip the metal in my leg out with a grunt. It hurt worse than I’d expected, but I didn’t want any help to go to me when it could assist a deadman or woman that actually needed it. I stood up as my leg healed and wiped some of the blood from my hands while a small crowd gathered around me.

I looked left and right at them. “What are you doing!? There’s fires to put out, and people to help. Get the fuck out of here!”

They all scurried away quickly, surprised at my volume. With them gone I took a deep inhale, trying to scent blood, and followed the trail to see who I could help. Wouldn’t do any good just standing there myself either.