"You're lucky, nothing's broken," Charles told Nadine while gently applying the gauze he found in his duffle bag to her still bleeding nose. The calmness of the moment provided stark contrast to the battle that had occurred in that area less than an hour earlier, bodies laying where they fell, any wounded either having finally died or managing to crawl away. The Duchess Gambit, where the victorious pair sat, was remarkably undamaged considering the firefight. All the damage the tug had sustained was above sea level and thus didn't affect the integrity of the boat.
"Why don't I feel lucky then?" Nadine grimaced, wincing and hissing in pain as Charles applied the gauze. She shook her head, "I can't believe Tobar slipped away… I'm such an idiot."
"Hey, don't blame yourself," Charles told her gently, fishing around in his pouch for the bottle of whiskey he knew was still inside. "For your first gunfight you did okay, I mean, you survived, which is more than a passing grade." He shook his own head, taking a pull from the bottle before passing it to the tomboy. "I cried all the way through mine." He tried to give the words the flavor of humor, but the pained memories of his first time fleeing 101 proved overpowering, giving the words the sad reflection he felt in his heart.
Taking the offered bottle, Nadine drank gratefully leaving a notable dint in the remaining whiskey. "Where'd you get that?" She asked, passing the dirty glass object back to her fellow survivor, shaking her head with another pained expression as the flavorful alcohol impacted her damaged nostrils.
"Some swampfolk had it on him. Found it while I was checking the boardwalk for survivors." He shrugged, taking another drink. "I figured we could find more use for it than he could."
"Fair enough." Nadine gave an awkward pause, clearly trying to build up the courage to approach a subject she found difficult. "So, listen…while you were out looking for supplies and checking the bodies I poked around the tug."
"And?" The Vault Dweller asked expectantly, waiting for the obvious bad news that was clearly incoming.
"And we've got a problem." She looked up towards the ship's wheel, cringing as she did. "We've got the boat, but it's useless without a key. The whole engine's locked up, so until we get that key we can't get off the island. And I'm assuming the longer we stay here the less likely we're going to make it off at all, now that two large angry groups are pissed at us."
"I'm assuming you didn't find that key anywhere onboard?" It was a shallow, near pointless hope, but all the same he had to try. When she shook her head mournfully he filled in the remaining steps, logically, "So, let's assume Tobar has it, wherever the hell he's gotten off too."
"Makes sense."
"He's going to be keeping it on him at all times," Charles mused, rubbing the bottom of his chin thoughtfully, "Because I'm assuming after this debacle he's going to be keen to leave the island himself. I doubt old Jimson is going to want to continue their relationship with so many tribals dead due to the two of us, indirectly Tobar's fault."
"I don't know," Nadine butted it, "The tribals are pretty reliant on supplies from the outside, though trust me, Jimson would never admit it. Tobar's pretty important with him bringing stuff in from the Capital Wasteland, and it's unlikely they're going to find a new trading partner on short notice. That'll buy Tobar some time."
"Same as before, he'll have the key on him, without the tug he's useless." Charles paused, putting every ounce of brainpower into figuring the tactical angle. "He'll be protected among the tribals, until he can find a way to reclaim the boat. But they won't hold him at the Ark and Dove, too obvious. I know where it is and we've got to assume the number of surviving tribals is a hell of a lot lower between the failed attack on the mansion and the battle on the boardwalk. They can't afford another battle like this one."
"What if he comes back here?" Nadine asked nervously, patting the hunting revolver at her waist for comfort, "Which he might, he might even bring backup."
"He won't get that chance." Charles took the lever-action rifle from its place on his back and began loading the weapon, making a mental tally of his remaining ammunition. He'd managed to scavenge a few additional rounds from the bodies but he really didn't have the bullets to wage a war. Fortunately, he wouldn't have to. "I have a contact, the fellow I actually put that hunk of tape and wire on the Farris Wheel for," he jabbed his thumb over his shoulder back towards the jamming device with an almost cavalier attitude. "He's got plenty of information, I figure, about every inch of this bloody island, and the firepower to do something about it. I'll track down Tobar, get our key back, and then we're getting the hell out of here." He glanced over at the orange-haired lass, "In the meantime, you stay with the boat. If anyone tries to take it…"
She pulled the hammer back on the revolver with a satisfying click, "I know. Just don't take too long…Okay?" She tried to keep the nervousness out of her voice, but unfortunately it still leaked through.
Charles nodded, "I'll be back in a flash."
Once I help Desmond out with Calvert, that is. But I think I've spent enough time on Point Lookout. I'm ready to go home.
"I thought you loved me!" He screamed, voice rattling about the steel walls and doors, echoing throughout the entirety of the Vault. "This is my home! I need it!"
The short jaunt from Pilgrims Landing to the Calvert mansion was a quiet one, with even the bloatflies having fled from the scene of the recent battle. For Charles, who'd come to grips with who he was, but didn't want to think too much about it, the silence was distressing. He'd lost his old harmonica back in the motel fire, and his throat was too sore to carry a tune, so he spent his time chewing a hunk of salted Mirelurk jerky and trying to focus on the impressive task ahead, convincing Desmond to help him. Something told the Lone Wanderer the ghoul wasn't exactly in the business of giving back, even considering what Charles had done to help him and, as such, was trying to formulate the most effective argument he could think of.
When every concept he considered sounded utterly ridicules, even to him, the Vault Dweller decided he'd rather wing it.
The Calvert mansion loomed over the wilderness, its massive, Victorian-era architecture and dilapidated white plank front proving just as somber as it had been during his first viewing. However, unlike that first glance, one of nervousness, apprehension and worry, this viewing was more cheerful. An ally dwelt within, with weapons, supplies and information. He'd put Calvert down, then find Tobar, shake that key out of the pudgy man's grasp and get off of Point Lookout. DC needed him, Riley needed him.
Riley…I have so much I have to explain, to apologize for…
Some instinct suggested in the back of his mind that he pause at the twisted, black iron fence that ringed the ancient mansion, just for a moment. He'd long ago learned to trust that instinct, pausing momentarily long enough to scan the grounds. Nothing out of the ordinary appeared.
He took a step forward and the mansion exploded.
The building shattered outward in an ear-splitting boom, flames rolling like an angry cloud. The force of the explosion threw Charles to the ground, driving the air from his lungs and bruising ribs. Hunks of stone, wood and metal rained down around his prone body. Miraculously he was unharmed by the falling debris.
After silence fell over the area, Charles shoved himself to his feet, snatching his fallen cap off the ground and jamming it onto his head. The space where the Calvert mansion had once stood was nothing more than a smoldering, flaming ruin. "DESMOND!" Charles screamed, rushing towards the rubble, rifle in hand, stepping around bits of concrete and wood. The dry grass had caught fire in several places, adding their own small plumes of dark smoke to the much larger one building above the mansion.
Up close the devastation was even more intense. The greenhouse had collapsed beneath the impact of the explosion's shockwave, reduced to a lumpy pile of twisted metal, shattered glass and flaming embers. The half shattered face of a marble statue lay submerged in the grass, gazing pathetically upward at nothing. What remained of the image was crushed beneath a panicked boot as, beyond all logical hope and sanity, Charles went blundering towards the mansion, needing desperately to pull one crotchety old ghoul out of the ruins, a task most likely impossible on account of the massive explosion.
"DESMOND!" He cried out again, feeling the scratchiness of a throat dry from battle and shouting, panic continuing to run rampant along his body. The ruins of the house were unspeakably horrifying, the carnage carrying such a distinct sensation of finality it was almost physical. The only portion of the mansion remaining in any semblance of togetherness was the concrete foundation, cracked and burned nearly beyond recognition, but still functionally intact. Atop the concrete square was a metal hatchway, leading downward into what Charles assumed was a sewer drain.
It turned out, that Charles was wrong on two accounts.
The hatch door flew open, an echoing cough erupting outward along with a wave of dust and rubble. Crawling up the rickety ladder separating the now visible panic room from the remainder of the Calvert Mansion, grey suit covered in soot and blood, was Desmond Lockheart. He was visibly shaken, mess of black hair matted and tangled, as fleshless hands drove him up the ladder.
"He killed my dogs!" The ghoul cried out, his tone laced with what Charles believed was genuine anguish. "That son of a whore, bitch-dog, puss-filled, pissbag, spawn of a rotting Brahmin turd, killed my dogs!" Desmond was shaking, hands clenched into fists that seemed more than ready to squash a brain between them.
"Who did? What the hell just happened here?" Charles was utterly baffled, kicking over the remains of a dining room table that had been launched in the explosion.
"Calvert, of course!" Desmond screamed rummaging about in his suit pocket for the packet of cigarettes Charles had seen him use before. "That smug little grey blob of nothing! He must have sensed your actions at the wheel because he utilized every last little bit of psychic energy stewing in that crackpot mind of his. He hijacked one of those disgusting tribals and sent the bugger into my home to activate my failsafe." He paused, finally managing to locate his cigarettes and light one, the pungent scent of tobacco reaching the younger man's nostrils. "My poor pups didn't make it…"
"So we're back to step one then?" Charles felt the sensation of hopelessness overwhelm his mind and voice. He didn't feel the need to ask after Tobar, if Desmond had known anything about the ferryman's location it would have been lost, along with all his equipment for utilizing it, in the mansion explosion. Even if it hadn't, the ghoul wasn't likely to be in the mood for a personal side quest.
"Not quite." The elder ghoul snarled, spitting bile and smoke as he did, "That idiot Calvert made one fatal mistake." He gestured toward Charles, pointing the glowing end of the cigarette at him like a laser pointer, "You rattled him, which was bloody well done by the way…"
Was that a compliment? From the grumpy limey? Will the wonders ever cease?
Charles inclined his head, acknowledging the comment. "He was so desperate," Desmond battered on, rolling on by the compliment without giving it a second thought, "That he expanded all his energy into the action, and that left a goddamn trail my scanners were able to find before the whole goddamn mansion went up in flames." Desmond gritted his teeth with such ferocity he snapped the cigarette in half. Watching the burning embers fall to the ground without much thought or care, Desmond simply lit up another. "The point of all this being, I finally know where that puss-filled, mistake of God is hiding."
"That's good news," Charles said hesitantly, not entirely sure whether he was going to like whatever came next.
"You're goddamn right it is!" The old ghoul howled as he spat the vengeful words across the room with the force of bullets. "He's set up in the old lighthouse, right under our bloody noses. We'll head over there and squash that insect beneath our boot heels, and burn the whole damn lighthouse down for good measure while we're at it." The feral grin returned, spreading across the British ghoul's face with horrifying swiftness. "Ah Calvert," he breathed out, words accompanied by a cloud of tobacco smoke, "I'll almost miss you when you're gone, you goddamn grease stain."
"That sounds like fun," Charles managed to say, keeping his tone remarkably neutral about the whole thing. It certainly would be nice to get one of the megalomaniacs who'd been so determined to drag him into this little war out of the picture. Plus, he might be able to reason with the remaining tribals after Calvert's death, an added bonus, one less group of murderous inbreds after his head.
"The best kind." Desmond's words held the cold chill of a man speaking from experience, and unafraid of letting anyone know. "Head down into my bunker and take whatever you need, food, explosives, medical supplies, ammunition, then meet me here. We're taking that lighthouse by storm."
"What?"
Charles was stunned; he was absolutely floored by what he'd just heard. He couldn't believe it, she couldn't be serious? Could she? Could she really? He had to know and so voiced the syllable aloud again, "What?"
Amata gazed across the room at him, hazel eyes watering, arms folded across her chest in a stance oddly befitting her new role as overseer of vault 101. She spoke again, "Please, Charlie, don't make this any harder than it needs to be."
He'd come back from the wasteland, he'd ended the bloody civil war ripping Vault 101 apart with no further casualties and he'd secured a future for their community, for his home, for the woman who he loved, who was staring right at him unblinkingly rigid, so why didn't he feel like a hero?. "Make this any harder than it needs to be?" He got the words out, tone torn between bitter sarcasm and an actual agonizing pain. "Are you really going to stand there and talk to me about making things harder than they need to be? Because that'd be just rich."
They were standing in Amata's new office, all her father's things left exactly where Charles remember, visible in the atrium beneath them was the bustle of a vault trying to right itself and prepare for the world outside. "We need some privacy," she'd told him and the young man couldn't have agreed more. What he expected was a drink and the rekindling of their relationship. It'd take time, sure, he was a very different man than the one who'd walked out of those doors months ago, but he believed in them, he had to. They could make it work, given it time. Maybe he'd even take up the role of chaplain, now that Father Daniel had passed.
What he'd found upon entering the overseer's office was a fresh vault suit, neatly folded, and nothing else he'd expected. Then Amata closed the door and everything he fought so hard to reclaim fell from his hands. "You need to leave Charlie…leave and never come back…"
And so the exchange had begun.
"You think I want to send you away?" Amata screamed trying to stand straight enough to match Charles' impressive height without effect. "You think I want to rip my own heart out?"
"Don't you dare speak about your feelings for me, don't you dare," he stomped across the room closer to her, jabbing her in the chest with his index finger to emphasize every word, "You can't stand there and act like this is hard for you, and then banish me! Don't you dare! I gave you everything back!" He glanced down at his hands, seeing blood that wasn't there, "I've killed to come back here! I've been through hell and back out there, dreaming, every night that I'd come home, to you. And when I finally make it back you use me up and throw me out like an unwanted cigarette!"
"I do love you!" She shoved him back, continuing to match his voice with her own, unafraid or uncaring if anyone overheard, "But I'm overseer now and I have a responsibility! I have to keep this vault in one piece and with you here I can't do that!"
"Why the hell not? You're the overseer and your word is law!"
"You know damn well why I can't! Your father started this whole mess! Half of the survivors blame you two for everything! As long as you're here there's no way we're going to have peace, no matter what laws or rules I put in place. 101 will tear itself apart until there's none one left. You're a hero…but you can't stay here." She patted the fresh vault suit, "So please take this and go."
"I thought you loved me!" He screamed, voice rattling about the steel walls and doors, echoing throughout the entirety of the Vault. "This is my home! I need it!" There must have been something in his eyes, because Amata actually took a step backward, shrinking away from the man she'd once called lover. "Give me names," he told her, deadly serious, "Tell me who it is, and I'll talk to them." The words tumbled out of his mouth in a rapid-fire order, hands twitching for the knife on his belt.
"You'll kill them?" Amata whispered, looking up at him with an expression that broke Charles. Fear. His beloved Amata was afraid of him. How had it come to this?
"Is that what you think of me?" He responded, tone neutral, voice hoarse, itching for the Chinese assault rifle on his back. Maybe talking wasn't enough, maybe if that's what she thought….
"I don't know Charlie…" She sounded so hurt, so terrified, that the violent impulses running through his veins faded away and the Lone Wanderer relaxed his stance. "I just need you to go. We can never repay you for what you've done for us, and we don't deserve it, believe me. But you can't stay. Please, I'm asking you as your girlfriend…please. Please leave us."
Charles stood still, gazing across the room at the woman who seemed so much smaller than she had all those years ago, had she shrunk or had he grown? What was he now? Man? Or Monster?
The two stood in silence, emotions and words utterly spent. Charles took a step towards her, then another, then another. Finally he could contain his emotions no more and dashed across the room, taking Amata up in his arms. Their lips crashed together in a savage assault that was equal parts affection and attack. He lifted her as she wrapped her legs around his waist, the pair kissing passionately. He put every feeling he ever had for Amata into that kiss, every emotion he'd never again feel, every action, every inaction, every waking moment of the future that was now gone forever.
Then he let her go.
Putting the woman down gently, he kissed her forehead, took up the new vault suit and left. He left her office, he left the vault and he left his old life behind. The young man who'd first walked out of that vault had been terrified, but full of life and hope. The man who left it now felt old, weary, his shoulders sagged, his heart was empty. He had nothing left, he was nothing…
And that's when he heard the radio advertisement for a faraway island called Point Lookout…
Calvert had hidden his secret lair well. It had taken the British ghoul and Lone Wanderer almost ten minutes of searching the lighthouse to find the trap door and another two to get it open. The well hidden hunk of plank and iron opened up to reveal a military-grade listening complex, full of long steel corridors, storage rooms and massive computers. Robobrains, turrets and Protectrons filled most of it, slowing the pair dramatically as they worked their way towards Calvert.
Charles was oddly satisfied the whole time, lever-action rifle and sawed-off shotgun punching holes in the metal beings standing between him and the foe. It felt good to be doing something useful for a change, something that might have a real impact on the island. It reminded him of the earlier days.
The final Robobrain exploded in a burst of burnt wire and circuitry, metallic corpse falling aside, limbs flailing limply as it failed to guard the massive steel double doors, behind which Charles had a pretty good guess what was hiding. Turning to face the ghoul, reloading his sawed-off as he did so, the Vault Dweller said cordially while gesturing towards the door, "Desmond, would you care to do the honors?"
"I'd bloody love to." Desmond punched the nearby control panel, watching intently as the doors slid away, hinges screaming in protest as rust ground against rust. Clearly, the door didn't see much use.
The room on the opposite side of those doors was vast. Several metallic walkways led from the doors to a massive glass tube in the center of the room. Beneath those walkways was a massive collection of computers and hard drives buzzing and chirping creating a constant low hum that blanketed the entire chamber. The room was ringed by stone archways, meticulously hand carved while several framed paintings took up wall space not occupied by additional computer monitors, from which streams of nearly unreadable code scrolled by faster than his eyes could follow. The flickering light bulbs in the ceiling did little to illuminate the entirety of the space, but fortunately the large glass chamber in the room's center glowed so brightly there was little difficulty seeing. Wiring of various sizes and colors ran out from the both the base and top of the massive container, some plugged into terminals and generators Charles could see and others vanishing into the dark cervices of the walls or the massive bank of machines below.
Floating inside the tube, within some unknown liquid, was a solitary brain; a brain Charles assumed was Calvert. Desmond took a slow step forward, sniper rifle in his hands. "Well, well, well," he said slowly, methodically, "Calvert, my old adversary. You're looking well, all things considering…"
Calvert was not amused. "Desmond." The brain spat, his words coming out of a decent sized speaker attached to the containment tube he was resting in. "I see your lackey managed to lead you here. You always did like expendables doing your work for you."
The ghoul snorted. "You'd have liked that, wouldn't you Calvert? For my final victory to be owed to someone else?" He clicked his tongue against yellow teeth, stepping forward even more, finely made shoes clicking metallically against the walkways.
Well, it kinda is.
"This victory is mine Calvert, you goddamn simpleton." The chuckle echoed off the chamber walls, bouncing around metallic walkways and hallways. "You proved so shit at killing me that you actually led me right to you. You know that? I tracked you here." Desmond cocked the sniper rifle, the sound impossibly loud in the silence of the chamber, 50. casing falling from the weapon, clinging against the walkway and falling into the computer banks below, audible the entire way down. "Checkmate, Calvert." The ghoul aimed his weapon at the pod keeping the brain alive, "I win."
The brain didn't seem distressed, quite the opposite. It actually laughed. "Desmond, do you think I'd be so stupid to let you find me without a trick up my sleeve? Professor Calvert is never surprised!" Desmond gave the brain a quizzical look before suddenly screaming in agony, dropping his weapon and falling to his knees. The glasses fell from his face and cracked, blood oozing from his nose and ears as he clutched his head in his hands, continuing to scream.
It happened so fast.
"Desmond!" Charles yelled, dashing towards the fallen Brit with his sawed-off aimed for the floating brain. "What the hell's wrong? Talk to me!"
"What's wrong?" Calvert lorded, gloating smugly behind the glass, "I happened of course!" The ghoul moaned in pain, hands gripping his head tightly as he spasmed on the ground. "I'm hitting him with concentrated psychic energy! He'll be dead in mere minutes as his brain boils from the inside, his fears and failures the final things he sees!" Calvert laughed manically, the robotic chuckle managing to actually momentarily drown out Desmond's screams. "The absolute gall! Coming against a mental warrior of my magnitude in such close range with a gun! To think, my greatest foe actually thought a gun would be enough to end Professor Calvert!"
Even as Charles took aim with his sawed-off, the brain directed his attention towards him. "Don't think I've forgotten you either!" Calvert shouted as a wave of overwhelming anguish struck Charles with the force of a Super Sledge. The Vault Dweller staggered backward, feeling the rush of pain in his mind, eyes burning, blood dripping from his nose. Only instinct kept the sawed-off in his hands as he fell to his knees.
The pain was overwhelming, but through it all, something worse came. Memories. He saw Amata throwing him from the vault, Riley lying in a coma in Underworld, Dad being gunned down at project purity, the Pitt and the face of the child he'd taken from her parents for a cause he still wasn't sure about, the Anchorage simulation and the death he'd witnessed, the mother he'd abandoned on the dock…the list went on.
Suddenly he was surrounded by ghostly figures, they seemed so real, yet he knew they couldn't be. Or maybe they were. "Stay down, slave, it's no less than you deserve." The gravelly voice belonged to Ishmael Ashur, the ex-paladin turned raider king, a man long dead, killed by Charles himself. The Lone Wanderer gazed up through the pain at Ashur's face, looking very real, "After stealing my child you deserve no pity." The boss drew a pistol and shot the Vault Dweller direct in the chest.
The pain of the bullet amplified everything he already felt in his mind, yet it wasn't the only one. Even as he clutched the wound, a different face appeared, Mr. Burke. "What good do you think you did, saving Megaton? Those people will still die in squalor! As if that wasn't bad enough you let the ghouls into Tenpenny Tower and they killed everyone as soon as you were left. Everyone. How's that for justice? Their blood is on your hands." With that, Burke raised a pistol of his own and shot Charles, putting a bullet in his chest next to Ashur's. The pain was exquisite.
"You drove me to this Charlie," Amata's voice echoed from behind him, so sweet even after all this time, "We could have lived in peace in the vault, you and me. But you didn't stop your dad, you didn't bring any peace, you just made things worse." He didn't want to look at her, but he heard the gun, and felt the bullet strike him in the back, driving the air from his lungs and driving him to the floor.
"Look me in the eye, boy." The new voice spat out. It was a voice he'd heard only once in his life, but he'd know it anywhere. He looked up from the floor into the face of Augustus Autumn, who was crouching over him, pistol in hand. "I killed your father, boy." Those words stung worse than the three bullets and mental anguish combined. "I killed your father and you did nothing. No," he paused, thinking aloud, "You did less than nothing. You could have avenged your father, helped Lyons restore Project Purity, attacked the Enclave, hell, you could have stayed in Megaton and protected it, but instead you ran away to have a pity party because Amata dumped you and you lost your daddy. Pathetic." Then Autumn shot Charles as well, the bullet striking him in the back next to Amata's.
The young man shuddered, blood leaking from his face, pain racking his body, the world around him fading in and out. Then he saw James. "Son," the doctor told him gently, waving aside the other specters with the brush of a hand. "Remember what I told you. You need to let me go, let the Pitt go, 101, everything. Your time is not done, and the Capital Wasteland needs you now more than ever."
"I love you dad." Charles grit his teeth and stood, watching the ghosts around him, save James who remained smiling, fade away. If Calvert had eyes they would have been as wide as dinner plates.
"How?" He squawked, "The force of my mental attack was impossibly strong! You should be dead! The force of the dark memories within you should have guaranteed it!" The brain began twitching in the jar, as if trying to flee, the strength of the psychic attack increasing. The pain in his skull grew, but Charles ignored it, wiping the blood from his nose and eyes with the sleeve of his vault suit.
"That's where you're wrong, Calvert." He aimed the shotgun towards the glass. "It would have killed me at one point. But I learned something about myself on Point Lookout. Here, on this island, I learned one very important secret." He leaned closer to the glass, "Do you want to know what it is?"
"What?" The brain whispered, its voice quivering in fear.
"I learned to forgive myself." Charles pulled the trigger. Both barrels of the weapon boomed throughout the chamber as twin shotgun shells blasted the glass aside, severing Calvert's connection to the chamber. As the brain fell to the floor of its containment tube and the strange liquid within drained away, Charles reloaded the weapon. "Now, if you don't mind, I have a project to reclaim." He pulled the trigger again. Calvert exploded like a popped balloon and the pain in his skull faded away, the gunshot wounds in his back and chest vanished.
The last thing to go was James. The doctor looked across at his only son and smiled. With a silent, respectful nod, he vanished.
It was dark. There were a few torches, and the glow of that mutant cave fungus, but it wasn't really enough to illuminate his surroundings. Though, judging by what he'd experienced as they'd brought him in, that blindness may have been a blessing.
The chamber he found himself in was a stone cave, enlarged by the island's residents. There was a cloying dampness in the air, suggesting there was water somewhere within the cavern. But it was the whispering that was the worst, that constant chattering and hushed suggestion just barely within audible range. It frightened him, because he was entirely certain he was alone in the cavern.
His hands were lashed to several planks of wood, holding him above the ground and straining his body, wrists rubbed raw by the coarseness of the rope keeping him aloft. The swampfolk had taken him and for what purpose he didn't know, or want to.
How long he hung alone in that half-darkness he couldn't guess, alone with nothing but the whispers and the flickering torches. Then, he heard the sound, a soft clicking. The noise grew steadily louder, as if the thing was advancing.
"Hello?" He shouted into the darkness of the room, "I'm sure this is a big misunderstanding! I'm not with the tribals! Not at all! No sir! In fact, I've always been partial to your kind! Please, just tell me what I can do to help you!" His words echoed, rapid-fire, throughout the small chamber, rumbling past the blocky object hidden by the shadows.
"Mistake?" A voice rasped back, clearly not one of the whispers, as he felt cold sweat run down his back and brow. "Mistake?" The voice said again, the clicking, tapping sound growing louder still, "There has been no mistake and there are never any events which could be called such. All things are usable to he who ever changes." The flickering torches revealed a robed, hunched over figure, carrying a gnarled wooden staff. He was terrifying, as if somehow larger and more powerful than he initially appeared. The figure approached the blocky shape and took something off of it. A dagger, a crooked dagger, gleaming in the light of torches
He began to sweat harder. "Please, I don't know anything! I swear to you I don't! Just let me go! I won't tell anyone anything!"
"Hush," the figure ordered, shuffling across the chamber, knife in hand, "It is not about what you know, that is true. But it is who you are. You will draw him here, and he must come to this chamber. I have seen it in the reflecting pool."
A brief flicker of hope. "So…you won't kill me?" He asked nervously.
"Not yet." The figure took the knife and approached, "But this is a sacred place, hallowed ground. And hallowed ground calls for blood."
As the first cut of the blade burned across his exposed torso, Tobar the ferryman found himself screaming, but whether it was from fear or pain he couldn't honestly say.
AN: I had to jazz up the Calvert fight scene, it just felt better that way. Alas, poor Tobar. What'll be his fate? And for those of you worrying about Riley and the others, don't worry, we'll see them soon. :) As always, thanks for reading and please remember to review. Until next time.