Things Lost and Found (a Waglington and Mianite fanfiction)

Chapter 46

Barrels that had likely been stacked against the collapsed outer wall were now in disarray. At first glance, it appeared they had simply toppled and rolled to the positions they now lay in, but Memento meowed loudly and stood up on his back legs briefly to call my attention to a depression in the dried, slightly sandy ground near one of the furthest barrels from the building. Okay, scratch that. The barrels had been thrown with force. Twisted and soot-stained shrapnel littered the area. I spotted one upright barrel with its upper third roughly removed; the contents were burning and spewing noxious smoke. Maybe there was an explosion? Walking among the dented and rusted barrels, I stopped myself before stepping in a wide dark stain on the ground that looked to have once been oil. The drum it had leaked from was charred and pierced by something. Pulling the projectile from the drained drum with a solid tug, I found it a tartarite tipped crossbow bolt with a blaze rod shaft. That would have done the job, I thought with a nod as I turned the red and orange arrow in my hand.

I wondered who had been drunk or dumb enough to use a fire sparking weapon close to barrels of fuel as I walked up to the shell of a building. The horrible but familiar smell I couldn't quite place was worse the closer I got to the empty doorway, stepping carefully among charred bits of wood from the porch. Memento couldn't stand the stench and stayed several yards back nervously watching me, twitching his tail and shifting from foot to foot. Um, Wag... I think that's...

I found more of the tartarite bolts driven deep into the wood of the doorframe and wall and an abandoned and broken kalendrite longsword lying in the ash of the porch. Moving to look inside without touching the precariously leaning structure, I found the source of the odor. Several bodies burned beyond recognition lay inside, half buried by the beams and shingles of the fallen roof. One body lay right next to the door and seemed in better shape than the others. I could still make out the material of his cracked armor: terrasteel.

Mianite! Anger bloomed fresh in my chest as I backed away from the destruction his soldiers had caused with my fists tightened. I struggled to block the vengeful thoughts and images that flooded my mind as I stormed around the side of the building to look for more clues, now clearly marking hasty boot prints cris-crossing the sandy ground everywhere I looked. Not everyone had died in there, I'd bet anything. A few grey clouds started to gather overhead before I got my temper back under wraps.

On the far side of the bar I got my answer. Burned bits of gear and circular scorch marks polka dotted the otherwise featureless, flat land. Someone had put up quite a fight here. Memento had followed on my heels and helped me look through the debris. I've got something. Jogging over, I saw Memento had found blood spatter and the discarded bloody arrow that had caused the wound to whoever had been bleeding. I looked up, and my heart stopped for half a second when I saw a straw hat lying forlorn, trapped under a broken crossbow ten feet away.

Oh no.

~Flashback~

Steve and I had been friends once, before the flirting started, before Martha fell asleep in my arms at that party, before she had me write her a love poem as payment for some materials I needed. I was still unsure which part had really set him off, or maybe it was a combination of all three. Whatever his trigger, when he got back from his business trip he was pissed. I was curious how he had even found out, since Martha had been gone on a trip of her own and did not get back until the day after he arrived.

"Waglington, mate, we need to have a little chat." I could hear his desire to strangle me though my communicator. I wasn't even in the Overworld at the time. So I wasn't too worried. "I've heard you've been hitting on my girl."

I paused my work on Tom's reactor—which I may have accidentally blown up—to unmute myself on my communicator. Being the incredibly clever wizard that I was, I decided to poke the angry bear. "Calling her 'your girl' is going a bit far; you did reject her after all." I could practically hear the smoke pouring out of his ears, and I just had to keep going. "And I didn't force her to do anything; the 'hitting on' was mutual." To be fair, she flirted with me first.