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Chapter 4
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“There was a bold rider, on a bold-blooded steed,”
“Had a face like the reaper, a heart full of misdeeds.”
“He was ruthless and cruel, scored a hun’ed score heads,”
“And the town of La Tumba would be better off dead.”
The silent figure observed his guide’s strange tune as they marched further into the wasteland.
“He was sickly and rotted, so he’d fight and he’d run,”
“Til’ there weren’t no more bullets in his six-shooter gun,”
“And the whole world was awatchin’ and awaitin’ in fear,”
“Prayin’ hard that the death of Diero’d be near.”
“Thas’s camp.” The guide stuck his cigar in the direction of an abandoned mine, spiraling down into the earth. “'im and 'is boys are ‘oled up in thad’ere mine huntin’ for some strange metal they done melted 'n poured right on their skin, says it gives’m immortalentry.”
“How do I know which of the hide-whippers is Diero?” The silent figure spoke, his face concealed by a combination of bandana and cloak drawn over his head, topped off with a curled-brim hat. The ruddy guide tapped on his cheekbone with the ashy end of his cigar. "Diero, he up’n poured the metal on 'is own face. "
Seven shots fired in quick succession, and the guide dropped to the ground. The silent figure barely flinched at the act, not looking up from the body until the still-hot ring of steel where the bullet exited was pressed against his temple. His eyes traveled to the hand that held it, which shimmered in what light shone through the sandy wind.
“Boss heard you’s acomin’.” The man with the gun replied, two others flanking him. “Git down there b’fore he come up’n git you.”
One of the men pushed the silent figure forwards, while another pulled the bandana up and over his eyes. He could feel his revolvers being pulled from their holsters and the path beneath his feet growing steep as he was lead deeper and deeper into the hole where this fiend, this ruthless monster dwelled. It was imperative to prevent thoughts of a shining knight entering the lair of a vile dragon from swaying the severity of this task.
After all, this man had come to die, and take the devil with him.
The blindfold was removed, much to the apparent horror of all of those present in the candle-lit room, with a rudimentary stone chair formed into one of the walls. On it, and surrounded by his loyal troop, his arms folded in stone-like indifference, was the skull-faced Diero, his nose having been hacked off years ago, and all visible skin on his head coated in the strange, silvery metal. He smiled cruelly at what mortified all his followers, his arms suddenly moving faster than the eye could follow, firing two bullets from his revolvers which both bounced ineffectively off their target, shooting in opposite directions across the room.
Their target, the silent man, grinned a sickening grin, which enhanced his rounded cheekbones and impossibly sunken cheeks, his glowing eyes sunken in ghastly hollows, and two additional eyes sunken into the side of his skull and jaw, strange veins traveling under his skin from the latter of the extra pair into some unseen opening to the inside of his skull. He had no nose, and his teeth, which were yellowed and coarse, bore the smoky circles of impact from the two projectiles, and he licked the marks off them with a chuckle.
“Alright,” Diero reclined, holstering his revolvers. “Ten seconds you’ve earned.”
In response, the stranger reached into his mouth and pulled something out - a cube of some kind of material with a metallic appearance. Walking to the white-hot forge where this mysterious metal was being smelted, he dropped the object in, and turned to meet a bullet from the smoking barrel of Diero’s gun. It entered his mouth, and the silent figure sputtered and gasped, falling backwards and clawing the air in a futile attempt to apparently dislodge the bullet from his windpipe before silently choking out.
“They’re sending the special ones.” Diero hissed, looming over the unmoving messenger. “Triple the heat; the sooner our bodies are merged, the sooner we will be invincible.”
The two escorts dragged the limp body of the silent figure out of that domain and well into the desert, to a silent and gloomy plain where dozens of graves rested. Some had already been dug in anticipation of occupants to fill them, and into one of these the stranger was about to be dumped, when-
The ear-splitting roar was only slightly preceded by an impossibly mighty flash, which shown clear through the bodies of the two men. Knocked off their feet by the resulting shockwave, they looked back in the utmost horror at the flaming cloud which rose up out of the desert. The view was interrupted by a sharp kick to the jaw for one and a kick straight through the neck of the other, the former hardly having time to find his gun before the stranger lifted him into the air.
“Who… are you?” He gasped, his throat clutched in the ivory grip of this loner.
The stranger smiled insidiously. “McGick, friend.” His jaw unhinged, the poor man getting a good look at the bullet smashed between his jaws and pressed into his molar before the world went dark.
From then on, Diero and his mad gang were never heard of again. The only thing ever found at the blast site, where the skin crawled with pain from the sizzling air, was a silver arrowhead the fiend had worn around his neck, and which was now embedded in the center of the crater as if to mark the spot the gang had fallen. It was taken by the stranger, and worn as a trophy, until much time later he was asked to take a very distant journey.
But with the promise it wouldn’t be long.
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