TBoS Round 1 Prologue

We had been trapped on a higher floor, the explosion causing the ground floor through the third floor to fill with the 7th through 10th floors worth of debris.  The whole place was on fire, and I had a dislocated shoulder on my main firing arm.

Fortunately we were able to improvise an explosive shell from some of the puss on the wall before we burned to death.  Firing it we jumped through the hole, and Andromeda was required to make a beautiful shot to an outside flagpole and swoop us down.  She did so quite well, with the only side effect of her breaking her leg when we landed.  To her credit she had tried to make sure she took the brunt of it; even as a vigilante I had to respect her police-snake-woman's instinct to protect.

It took us a few days longer than the way out, due to frequent re-bandaging and stopping to just wince and groan, but we made it back to Tonca before we both collapsed from exhaustion.  They put my shoulder back in its' socket and I slept for two days straight; Andromeda was out for four.

The odd thing was that on the way back the scenery was set; idyll pastures and bucolic farmland all the way back, with just a ruined castle off in the distance marring things a bit.  The story had been set straight, the world was back in balance.  In Tonca when I was moving again, I made my way down the road; there was no section made of sheep.

I did notice that there was much more architecture familiar to me, and Andromeda noted the same thing when she was awake, and very much irritable in a cast.  We had done it together, equal parts her and I; so now a little bit of the story reflected our partnership.

We were feasted and hailed like Kings, even after we revealed our real names.  I thought the mayor and Sheriff would be mad, but it seemed like they had changed too; now they were the saved village, and us the heroes.  It is a strange world we find ourselves in here.

I left Andromeda in Tonca to recover, now that there were some of her race around, having been brought in to the story by her heroism.  I managed to sneak out during the third awards banquet we were being given.  She gave me a sad smile, and I knew she wanted to go.

We had talked, and realized this was probably what we were here to do; to set the stories right, to put worlds back in order piece by piece.  She wanted to come with me, but we both knew she needed to recover.  I might be going a stretch alone, but I knew she would be back out there too quickly herself.  Now there were two of us, the knights errant of literary repair, putting stories straight where they had been wrong.

I didn't know if I'd see her again, after she had managed some adventures of her own, but I hoped.  She was interesting, this Andromeda a.k.a. Livia Hissy del Fuego.  I hoped I'd see her before this ended, however it would.

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Festooned with more supplies than I could have needed with a roan stallion to boot, and the page Andromeda had given me with 'lightNING BOLT!' written across the top,I left Tonca two weeks after we had returned.  I travelled on the familiar well maintained country road for a few days, through forest and glen.  The world was ordered, and proper; it felt good.

But after a few days I found myself moving away from the green and in to the brown.  The road became less a road and more a trail, desert seeping in around me with every step.  Sometimes it flickered, just in the corner of my eye, and I knew that once again I had entered Wild Story, as we had termed it, the desperate hazy and unformed fiction that Lady Ink had caused to enter this world.  Grit began to accumulate in my clothing, and my bags.  And my mouth, and throat.

Finally, a week out of Tonca, I was thirstier than I had been since my Legion days.  I had spotted the small town the day before, and made my way in now after having made sure it was real, and not a hallucination.  My spurs jangled softly as I slid off of my horse, and it wasn't until I hitched it to the post I realized I hadn't had spurs when I left.
I was going to investigate that when I heard a voice behind me.

"We don't like strangers much around here, boy…I suspect you better git."  It was a rough voice, with an accent I would have associated with the colonies.  I turned to find it attached to a rough man I might have associated with the colonies.  Weathered and tanned, his brown clothing and wide brimmed hat were of secondary importance to the steady hand reaching slowly for a pistol on his belt.

"Balls…"  I cursed.