The Devil You Know
Part I
I hate the fucking sand. It gets in your boots, it gets in your drawers, it gets goddamned everywhere. And now I've got some red scarfed bastard chasing me. He almost caught me back in Cheyenne. Had to high tail it back south. I think I gave him the slip going across the mountains and circling back around to head toward Texas. But who knows. - From the journal of Thomas Cassidy. 1878.
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Thomas Cassidy ran naked through a burning desert, his skin slapping together in the humid stickiness. Unkept red hair blowing in the wind as he went. The sun played tricks with his head, and he partially knew it, causing him to question everything. He no longer knew if the things that pursued him were real or all in his head, but at this point, Thomas Cassidy had been a Thaumaturge long enough to know that it might not matter too much.
Rough rope stung his bound hands and the spurs of his boots clicked against the rocks of a prehistoric river bed. Luckily they let him keep the boots, for all the good they’d do him when whatever now chased him caught up. He ran wildly, zig-zagging, and vaulting over rocks in his path, He had to figure out what was going on, but he also knew deep down he had to keep running.
Cass ran on pure adrenaline from the gunshot but he didn't know how long he'd been running. Everything was bleeding together as the panic set in and the sun cooked his mind. He had no idea if he’d been hit, but he assumed he wouldn’t be running if he had been. He also couldn’t remember how he knew any of that. He just remembered the bang.
The soft sound of claws clicking on the dead riverbed mixed with the growls and howls of their owners. He risked a look back over his shoulder, still pumping his legs, and tripped on a rock jutting up out of the earth like a hand purposefully going for a dirty shot. Snarling, growling, guttural sounds gained on him as he pushed himself up onto his feet and began to run again.
Tender skin stung with cuts and scrapes from the fall. He didn't care. He ran headlong across the flat landscape toward the mountain range reaching high into the sky in front of him. Even though he knew deep down he'd never make it to the mountains before they caught him. His body dripped with sweat as he huffed along the desolate stretch of land, hearing ravenous black dogs nipping at his feet.
Another loud crack broke the air around him, and he felt something fly by his ear, just before a loud crack came from beneath him. The sensation of falling took over as his stomach rose up and threatend to come out his throat. Something scrapped him on the way down, maybe even stabbed him, he'd just have to hope he healed quickly. Flailing in a dark freefall Cass’s senses played hell with his mind. It almost felt too long coming as the darkness rose up to meet him.
Then came the thud.
The one you know is coming, but it is all too difficult to prepare for. You don’t roll gracefully out of freefall, you land how you land and hope you don’t hear a snap. Lucky for Cass there was no snap but the pain was awful all the same. He shortly wondered if a normal person could survive a fall like that.
Cass sat up and rubbed his aching back in the cold darkness, the spotlight from the collapsed shaft cover above his only light. Frantic shadows circled from high up top as a larger shadow began to move in and cover the light. Cass could hear the horehoof's sharp cracks against the stone high above. Cass scrambled back into the safety of darkness on hands and his butt. He sat in the darkness as quiet as he could manage while still heaving from the previous sprint.
A rifle cracked high above and the echo threatend to burst his eardrums.
It took everything in him to remain still and not move once he’d realized the shot wasn’t aimed toward him. The shadows of his pursuers bobbed around the hole like flys circlinga a horse's ass. They’d stop for a moment and he would hear the echoed sounds of heavy breaths and sniffing pants from above before they’d begin to circle the hole once again.
Sweat beaded his brow and he realized he'd been sitting in a very uncomfortable position, but he'd just have to live with it until he could move. After a while that felt like time stretching for enternity the hooves charged away and then a short time after the soft padded footsteps also faded into the distance. He let himself collapse on the dirt floor of the mine tunnel he’d fallen into and breath. The afternoon sun no longer formed a spotlight over his location. He sat up once again in the dingy darkness and finally stood to his feet.
Everything over the last few days was at best a blur, at worst a dark spot in his memory. Cass thought back, trying his hardest to remember anything at all. But right now the only thing coming to mind were big black letters that read RUN. Something in Cass’s mind didn’t want out. So he decided to let it sit and find some way out of this old mine shaft first.
Cass wiped the dirt off of his naked flesh as best he could and began to feel around the darkness for anything that could prove helpful for him. He found an old rag and a broken length of wood from a forgotten mine cart track. The cloth was easy enough to tie around the tip of the pole for a makeshift torch. Then he snapped his fingers and a flick of fire appeared on the tip of his thumb by magic.
“Let there be light,” Cass muttered to himself as he lit the old rag. The echo of his own voice carried down a nearby corridor.
As his choices seemed to be one dark corridor to god knows where, and another almost identical corridor. He stood for a moment as the soft echo of his own words hit his ear. He decided to go down the tunnel that talked to him first. Venturing down the dark stone corridor softly coughing at the dusty air.
It felt to him like no one had been down here in years, maybe decades, he couldn’t be sure. He ventured forth into the darkness with a slight unease growing in his spine. The sound of his own boots hitting the hard ground kept him company as he walked along producing a soft echo. Then he tripped and fell to the ground, quickly scooping the fumbled torch back up worried of what he'd find.
Some other poor soul who'd been left down here to rot from the look of it.
Not only were they all bone, but a heavy layer of dust covered the whole thing showing how longt ehy'd been trapped down here. He continued on hoping the presence of the skeleton meant he’d find some form of clothes sooner rather than later.
No such luck at finding clothes, but he did find what looked like a run down office. The dark corridor he was in expanded out into a large room where the little run down building sat off to the side. He crept around the darkened room, careful that he spied no movement before jogging across the large open area to the waiting office like he was worried about spying eyes. The door practically disentigrated and fell to the ground in pieces as he entered.
The room looked dusty and unused like everything else in this old mine. Obviously some kind of administrative office, which gave Cass hope he was near an entrance to this particular mine. Most things had been removed from the room, the only things left were lockers lining the far wall and a wooden desk set in the middle. Broken down and leaning due to one missing leg the desk had obviously seen better days.
Dust jumped into the air as Cass ran his hand across the wooden table top causing a coughing fit. It was like he had just killed a dust bunny and eviscerated its corpse directly in front of his face. It wasn’t pleasant, to say the least. He carefully pulled open the desk drawers to find nothing but an old bottle of scotch, and a bunch of useless junk, covered in dust but the scotch was still plenty drinkable luckily enough.
Cass popped the cork and took a swig from the bottle, setting it down on the part of the desk he’d inadvertently cleaned and walked up to the lockers. None were locked, but most were unfortunately empty. He did find a pair of trousers, a miners jacket, and a revolver with four bullets. He pulled the gun from its holster and inspected it in the dim torchlight. It was an old Single Action Army, the kind where you had to fan the hammer for every shot. Somehow the thing wasn’t a rusted heap, but the weapon had obviously passed its glory days. Who knows, the thing might not even fire.
The gun slid into its holster easily enough and the clothes seemed to fit a bit baggy. Casscarefully patted himself down in the dim torch light. He hadn’t been shot after all, which was a blessing. He wouldn’t be using any of his healing on something like this. He knew it wasn’t exactly a limited resource at this point. But, healing from mortal wounds always made him feel bad for the souls in his body being used to keep him alive. It also still hurt like hell getting shot whether he died from it or not.
He carefully tied the gun belt to his waist and fixed it so that it sat low so that the revolver’s grip brushed the tip of his fingers whenever he walked. On a lark, he dug through the junk in the desk drawer and found himself another 8 bullets. He carefully filled the revolver and put the remaining six in the leather slots on the front of the belt.
Cass stepped out of the dark office looking more like a Cowboy from a romance novel than anyone actually intimidating. A printed sign with big bold letters sat on the other side of the room, it read exit with a big arrow pointing toward one of the many cave like holes in the rooms walls. He raised his torch up high and walked into the darkened void to hopefully find his way out of this.
