Kelly awoke in a hot coffin of rock. Red rock that glowed from within, lustrous and reflective and wet. Wet with her sweat. Her body was burning and crying from every pore.
So this is what waking up in hell is like...
She breathed in deep of the hot, humid air. The last thing she remembered was a score of tribals restraining her from Danse, her futile efforts at reaching for him as he sank lower and lower to the ground, then a prick at her neck before falling into a black vortex. Danse. Where is he? What if he's dead? What if they killed him? What if he's in hell too?
The dark presence in her mind wanted her to die. To dwell through the inescapable sludge of her pain and grief, thinking of Nate, Shaun, her world. To give one final rave at the top of her lungs, crack her head open on this rock, and then just give up as her fury blood escaped her, eternally bleeding in the bowels of hell where she belonged.
But what remained of her thought of Danse and of finding him.
You better not be dead, too.
Lifting her neck, her forehead touched the rock above her as she peered down at herself. She was clean, and garbed in red. A basic bando enwrapping her breasts and a short wrap skirt that barely concealed her, open at one hip with only a thin braided rope to keep it in place. She found herself unable to even roll and check in the tight space, but she dearly hoped it was enough fabric to cover her right ass cheek.
At least she wasn't in her birthday suit.
All of her gear was gone. A smoother, more elastic version of the white healing paste she and Danse had used was slathered over her mosaic of wounds, and by the feels, even over the scratches and lacerations to her face that she had obtained from her catfight with Star Paladin Groves, when the woman had stomped down on her head and dented Danse's helmet into her face. That felt so long ago now, though in reality it had only been two weeks ago. She briefly wondered what the one-eyed bitch was up to, if she was still joined to Maxson by the hip after his poisoning, or out fulfilling her promise to hunt down Danse to take her vengeance.
The bitch would have to go through her, again, to get to Danse.
Kelly had just enough room to squeeze her hand up through the space between the rock and her body to feel at the paste on her face, two slashes running in parallel lines down from her right hairline to the equator of her forehead, just above her brow, and one along the peak of her right cheekbone. If she was lucky, she would sport some badass scars to rival Maxson.
"Hey fuck-boy, you like a woman with battle scars? Not just a pretty face now, huh?"
Done checking over her condition, Kelly sent her fingers on a quest to search the rocky space for a crack or an opening or something. She was hoping she wasn't buried alive or cooking in some sort of natural oven to be eaten at a feast for cannibals. The only threads keeping her from snapping free in panic were the tides of grogginess sweeping over her limbs from whatever poison she had been dealt. "Hey!" she screamed after finding no luck with her fingers, bashing her fists at the rock instead. "Let me out!"
The space was too tight to even pass a leg over the other or shift position to stretch out sore muscles. She tried, but only ended up exerting herself to a point where the narcotic in her bloodstream sent her head on a vertibird fly-by around the tallest skyscraper in Boston, only there was no Deacon to hold onto this time. Fat, luscious beads of sweat rolled off her skin, pooling beneath her like a bed of oil to crisp up her skin. Just what the cannibal ordered.
"HEY! LET ME OUT!"
Before she could give in to panic, a sonorous crack startled her to the bone. New light and fresh air flooded in through an opened fissure before it yawned wider and eventually peeled away, just like the lid of a coffin. She was in a firelit cave. The smell of Earth, smoke, and sweet flora filled her nose. Kelly sprang up to find herself face-to-face with another woman holding her at spear point.
"Stay, she-demon! Stay!"
Kelly stayed. The woman was by no doubt a Red Claw. Strikingly attractive, with large black eyes, a full mouth, high cheekbones, and rich ebony skin that indicated her ethnic descent. Her face was patterned from the nose upward in lacy swirls of red paint, like a masquerade mask defining her onyx eyes in exaggerated detail. Her lips were just as red, with twin lines running up over her cupid's bow to connect with the design over her nose. Her natural auburn red hair was braided in tight, individual strands that fell well past her waist and jingled together with the small metal rings that tied them off. A thick leather headband wrapped her forehead and adorned two delicate antlers that extended backward like an extra pair of ears fashioned from bone.
As for what she wore, it was even less than Kelly. She was practically naked beneath swathes of lacy red body paint and a belt with dangling bullet casings painted red, barely camouflaging her crotch.
She was clearly frightened of Kelly, though willing to defend herself if push came to shove. Why would they have kidnapped her and posted her under the guard of someone who feared her? Under normal circumstances, Kelly would have tuned into her infamous compassion and played the diplomat to try and placate the woman. But they had darted Danse and now he was nowhere in sight. The Madness was still throbbing and clobbering inside her. She wasn't about to play nice until she found him, safe and sound.
"The man I was with, where is he!? What have you done with him!?"
As she moved onto her bare feet and began to rise, however unsteadily, the Red jabbed her spearpoint nearer, the whites of her eyes stark against the red rimming them. "Back! Back, demon!"
"Where is he!? WHERE!?"
"Back! BACK!"
Kelly reared like a viper. Not at all liking the fact that the woman refused to answer her, her alarms were screaming on overdrive and she was seconds away from lunging for the spear, when a canvas curtain violently parted to expel a group of three more tribals hurrying onto the scene. Two men, one woman, all armed.
The tallest and oldest of the men stepped forward with brandished crossbow, taking swift aim at Kelly. "Stand down, Fury Blood!"
Fury Blood. She had been called that before. By one of the slaves she had rescued in the Bleeding Abyss dungeons. Foo-Fighter, was it?
The woman holding her at spearpoint spoke without plucking her gaze from Kelly. "No. Do not provoke. Let she-demon be. I will handle her."
She wasn't about to be handled by anyone. Her patience was rubbed raw. Kelly took one step toward the spearhead, braving the way it tested her with another stab. "Answer me, and that spear won't end up in your skull."
The red woman didn't flinch, but the man with the crossbow flinched for her, refusing to resign his aim. "Heed her, Sightwalker."
Sightwalker.
A heavily clad woman on his right implored through a deep, beefy voice behind the barrel of her pipe shotgun, a variant Kelly had never seen before. "The she-demon will cast about her gaze of doom. Set us all afire."
If only I had that gaze of doom for real.
The Sightwalker made no effort to deny such demonic power in her, so Kelly played it up, letting her eyes labor over each one of them with confronting zeal, speaking in a voice of lazy, luxurious darkness. "It's been too long since I unleashed my gaze of doom..."
It spooked them. The armored woman spat something gutteral and lifted her shotgun up from the hip, the male archer on the leading man's left tensed and drew his shaft, and the leader spread his arms out in an effort to calm them, dropping his crossbow aim.
But the Sightwalker killed her buzz by finally thrusting the point of her spear up under her chin, drawing blood with a nick at her throat. Her aim was true and her strength of thrust was surprising for her soft, womanly form. "Eyes on me, Fury Blood! You will not harm them!" Her decorated eyes ticked in essence to her clan members, before speaking again in more subdued tones, "and they will not hurt you."
That was the finale of it. When the woman could see that Kelly was momentarily calmed, she removed her spearpoint from her throat. "Your Danse is in healing. He is well, but he sleeps deeply."
My Danse. So many things fired through her synapses that Kelly struggled to work them out into a cohesive language. "You know his name? What's wrong, where is he? I want to see him!"
The red woman was patient. "We know both of you, Kelly Harper, Savior of Slaves, Whisper in the Fire, She-Demon of the Dark Deep, Soothsayer of the Sky Power, Eyes That Have Seen the Apocalypse, She Who is Fury in the Blood."
Just a small list of titles... and there were some new ones in there, too. The only way she could wrap her head around the fact that the Reds knew their names was if they had overhead them. Meaning she and Danse had been watched closely. Very closely. It was more than a little unsettling, but also comforting, in a strange way. Like realizing they had never truly been alone throughout their hardships. Though realizing they had truly never been alone throughout their most intimate moments didn't sit quite as well with her.
"You're Red Claws, right?"
The woman turned the question over to the older man with the crossbow. He reminded her of a leaner version of Grognak the Barbarian, with long sun-bleached hair and square jaw. His eyes were as weighted as any leader's, reminding Kelly of both Danse and Maxson,-and maybe a little of herself-and his face was bare of face paint but for three claw strikes on his chin, just like Clay-Crawler's tattoo.
He inherited the question from the woman with a grim nod, as if it were a solemn duty to reveal. "What is left of us, yes." He paused, maybe for effect, maybe to allow her to digest, before lowering his crossbow and inspiring his flanking guards to follow suit. "They call me Red Roark. I am co-leader of this cell of Red Claws, along with Prowess. You will meet her soon enough. This is Roulette," he gestured on his right as the woman jutted her chin at Kelly, all staunch and butch, though not without a flare of femininity with long plaited hair and sharply defined eyes within red eyeliner. Her face paint was less delicate and more slap dash. "This is Torque." The short-stature of the archer was concealed beneath a reptilian radraptor pelt with a cowl, but he gave Kelly a subtle nod in greeting. "And our Sightwalker is called Pandora's-Box. She is one of three who guide us."
As Red Roark gestured to Pandora's-Box, Kelly looked her over with a fresh perspective. Mama Murphy had formed a chem addiction in order to gain the Sight. Were all Sightwalkers chem-heads, too? She would ask later. Right now she only cared about one thing.
"The she-demon wants to see her Danse, now."
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The catacombs were like a series of flute pipes for giants, singing like wind chimes as they interspersed their chambers with dug-out 'spy holes' that were carved all the way up to the surface of the desert. Peering up one on passing, Kelly was humbled to see how far underground the caves really were. The sky high above was a pale yellow dappled with orange. She blinked and squinted as grains of sand tumbled down into her eyes. "How far out from the canyon are we?"
Red Roark waited ahead, while Roulette and Torque had halted aside Kelly. Pandora's-Box had remained back in her chambers, shooting up chems and seeing into the future, no doubt. "We are around the canyon," he said, and when he siphoned her frown, he smiled, more to himself than at her. "Within a long sprint's reach of the outer walls. The Dark Bloods are too pig-headed to think we were bold enough to camp right under their noses. It's a favorable position to surround your enemies, but our cell is small and secluded here. The best we can make of it is to spy on their activities and harass their supply lines coming in and out of the canyon. We don't dare overstep our luck and make a pest of ourselves more than we have to, or they'll go on a witch hunt, like they did with you." He cast her a pointed glance, as if to say you dipshits forced us to make a move we shouldn't have, and Kelly swallowed it whole before turning her eyes aside in chagrin. He sighed. "If only we had the numbers to make it count..."
He was stale and hollowed-out like an overused rifle, speaking in a deadened monotone that droned more than Danse giving an opinionated speech with a mouthful of thesaurus, but he spoke well, Kelly noted. Not like a tribal born of this land. Like a soldier, a veteran.
Children bustled and stole about as the four continued on, skinny and clad in lean muscle fibres beneath swirls of leather and red. They giggled and spied in small packs, trailing behind the mythical outsider and vanishing in spurts of laughter when she glanced back to catch sight of them. Kelly thought of the Red child that had lured her out on the canyon when she found herself lost and ready to give up, and then the whole band of children leaping off the cliff's edge into the waters below, showing her the secret way into the slave dungeons. Had they all gone out looking for her of their own free will, like rebellious little kids, or had the Red Claw leaders sent them out, like expendable pawns in whatever fucked up game they had played with her and Danse?
Distrusting, Kelly eyed Roark's back as they walked, studying the many battle tokens and grisly baubles hanging on his loose tunic. The catacomb walls were skirted with crimson and beige Fireferns, sprouting their blood red Firefruit in generous clusters. Above them, cave paintings stroked across the rocks, some crude and childlike, some elaborate and complex. They depicted scenes of vast violence and tragedy, clans slaughtered by invaders bearing dark clouds about them and fiery skies above them, while meagre survivors fell into sorrow and suicide. Some painted tales of slaves escaping to reunite with clans, only for the slaves left behind to receive the punishment of knowing the escapee. Scenes of heroism and glory were unravelled into eternal punishment in what Kelly guessed was the Dark Deep. It was the first time she had ever discovered it's depiction, in word or painting; world-consuming oceans of dark blood thrashed and jarred and gyrated in colossal tidal forces, sucking up all those who fell into it's damnation for the sky fires to catch the oil in the dark blood and burn it's victims alive, like an ocean of magma.
A world apart from any other forms of Hell or the Underworld she knew of. Reality was hellish enough, why not take it up a notch, right?
"You guys are fond of your tragedies and punishments," Kelly commented brusquely, stopping to stare at a particular painting of a deathclaw battling a rad-dragon. "No paintings of hope or victory to keep morale up?"
Roark stepped to join her at the violent painting. "Morale can be kept without the giving of false hope." Kelly stared at him as he stared wistfully at the painting, but she said nothing. "Do you think those children running around would be as hardened against the world if we put dreams into their heads that would never come true? The grind of simple survival keeps us preserved, because every sunset and sunrise is a victory. The minds of the young can break so easily when faced with impatience to progress and disappointment when it all falls apart. They know how it all is because we bare them to it and expect them to do their part for the clan. False hope can be just as corrupting as low morale."
Kelly found herself at an impasse, unable to move for or against that philosophy. She wondered if Danse and Maxson would agree on that. Those two muscle heads were her only role models for leadership, despite how contrasting her ethics were to theirs.
She remembered something Danse had said to her a long time ago during her first visit aboard the Prydwen. "I never liked having Squires aboard the Prydwen, but Maxson believes they should train under fire."
Maybe they would have opposing opinions, then. They were similar yet dissimilar in so many ways, she never knew with those two. And lately, it was like she never knew with herself, either. Which one of them was the more powerful influence over her? Which one was she the most powerful influence over, for better or worse...?
As they came near a larger cavern at the end of the wide passage, more scents of fresh food and human habitation wafted to her nose. Comforting firelight within made the shadows at the edge of the passage seem to judder and dance stiffly, like a light show stuck in motion. The light, sounds and smells beckoned her, it felt like forever since she had been in the company of so many people, but they were halted as a woman in a red snakeskin wrap approached Roark. Kelly had time to wonder if they were allowed to wear anything that wasn't red, before the woman's eyes briefly thieved a look at her in return before speaking.
"Bond brother," she said as way of greeting.
"Icing," he greeted in return.
"I bring bad news."
"About the latest batch?" Roark asked her at once.
She dipped her head. "It has been tainted with bad crop."
"The whole batch?"
"Most. Home-Grown says is safest to scrap whole batch. Children will feel effect of even smallest amount of tainted dose. Too risky, he says. I cannot trade with bad batch. Will hurt my rep with other cells."
He thought a moment, then nodded. "Do it then, scrap the whole batch. It's a waste, and it will cause some stress, but we can forage again in the night."
After Icing departed again, Kelly stepped up on Roark's side, more than a little curious. "Bad batch of medicines?"
"...Among other things."
"Chems, she-demon," Roulette provided.
She had to let that sink in for a few moments. "She was talking about children. You give chems to your children?"
"You can judge us all you like, just keep that judgement to yourself until you know the stakes of life in the Bloodlands." He took a lecturing tone with her, one that Kelly did not appreciate. The change in his manner was so bipolar that she was rendered speechless while he turned and beckoned her onward, through a passage that meandered away from the warm cavern.
They roamed rock a while longer before coming upon a cavern shared by two men, one old and wizened, one younger, presumably an apprentice or assistant by the way he was catering to the Elder. Skulls and shapely vials dangled from the high ceiling where delicate stalactites tapered down in crystalline structures. All around the small cavern, odd trinkets and displays of red worship bombarded Kelly in reverent force. The Red Claws were just as spiritual as the Dark Bloods. Only time would tell if their gods and demons were as demanding of torture and death.
"Is this her?" The old man had dropped a handful of herbs and roots to gaze at her.
"This is she," Red Roark confirmed, stepping aside.
Kelly froze as the old man in a deathclaw pelt and headdress walked to her, his step surprisingly assured for his rakish appearance. His hair was long, wispy and grey, plaited in sparse strands and beaded with red and gold. Over the wrinkles, his face was a labyrinth of painted lines and symbols, both red and gold like the beads in his hair. There were bitter lines ingrained around his mouth, as though from a lifetime of perpetual pursing. But the mouth had only smiles for her right now.
"She Who Is Fury in the Blood." His voice was thick and eerie, hands guided by unsteady motor skills as they cupped her face and squished her cheeks together until her lips puckered. He was high as all fucks. "She comes for the Bloodlander, her brave Bloodguard."
He could only be referring to Danse. But before she could query, or demand, Roark cut in with the introductions.
"This is Rolling-Stone, our eldest Sightwalker. His acolyte over there is Talking-Head." The younger man, around the same age as Pandora's-Box, touched his chest of dark skin and bowed his head of red-dyed dreadlocks.
"Hello, Fury Blood. I am brother by blood of Pandora's-Box, though not brother by blood-bond. Is long story. I hope she healed you good. If not, I can heal just as good."
Prying her face back from the sandwich of Rolling-Stone's hands, Kelly forced an amiable smile. "Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. Can I see Danse?"
"Ah, yes. Follow." Talking-Head gestured her and her attached Rolling-Stone over to a curtained-off section of the cavern. As his arm whipped back the drapes, a posse of painted children scattered from their vigil over the coffin of carved rock. A candle flickered demurely atop it, spicing the air with the scent of flora and herbs. Hot coals were smouldering beneath it in a deep well carved into the cave floor, not hot enough to cook the flesh within the coffin, but hot enough to induce a steady flow of sweat from the pores like a sauna. Kelly guessed the idea was to sweat out the toxins from the body, not to prepare it for cannibalism...
She brushed away Rolling-Stone and moved for the sauna bed, pushing away at the slab of rock keeping it closed with the help of Talking-Head. Her heart fluttered when she saw Danse safely tucked inside. He was still out cold, garbed in a red loin cloth that would mortify him, dripping in sweat, and his wounds were plastered over with the white poultice. He looked serene, like a sleeping god of war, all oiled muscle and grizzled features.
She knelt down and touched him lightly on the cheek to rouse him, smiling to herself. "Hey, wakey-wakey, gorgeous."
His eyelids stirred and he frowned in his sleep, but he didn't wake at once. Kelly gently shook his uninjured shoulder and continued to speak to him in a soft voice, but the more she attempted to wake him, the more distressed he grew, mumbling and tensing up under her touch. It was unlike him to be so deeply immersed in his nightmarish world that she couldn't wake him. He was a light sleeper and often woke at the drop of a pin.
Her smile was gone and replaced with a pulsing resentment. That was dangerous territory for them to be in. "What did you dart us with?" she asked no one in particular, keeping her eyes on Danse. If they said poison or chems, she would lose her shit.
Her answer came from Roark. "A dose of Nightfire. It is a heavy sedative."
Kelly breathed heavily with grudging thought. A sedative... lucky for you.
"He is a large man. It's almost impossible to grow so large on the fodder of this land, and we do not kill enough of our foes to indulge in excessive cannibalism, like the Dark Bloods. We live lean. The dose was tailored to the likes of our people. It worked faster on you than it did on him. If you remember, you were out before he was, though he was darted first."
"I remember," Kelly assured, icily.
"No." Danse's mumbles were coherent now. "Not you. I won't. Not you."
She wondered if it was Cutler he was dreaming of, or her in his place, morphed into a demon lost to the radioactive Madness. "Danse. It's okay. Wake up. Come back to me. It's just a dream." She stroked the borders of his face the way she had down in the bunker, after his attempts at ending his own life. It was something she always did to pull him back, something familiar and soothing, something for him to know as her. "I've got you. I'm here."
But when his mumbles escalated into growls, shouts, and aggravated thrashes, Kelly could feel the tension in the people surrounding her. The sound of someone lifting a firearm snapped her head about and removed her focus from Danse. It was Roulette.
"No, he won't hurt m-" she started to say, but a flash of movement and then a gruelling hand about her airway stalled the words from leaving her throat. She gaped into his glassy, insensate eyes as they bored into her, unfeeling, unseeing. With one hand he had lifted her up off her knees where she had knelt, the other was balled into a fist, ready to strike. He drew it back in preparation.
The tribals fell on him as one, restraining his arm and prying Kelly free from the other. Talking-Head crouched by her as Roark, Roulette, and Torque kept Danse at bay, finding themselves struggling to wrangle him in as he struck out as if blindfolded. He landed a good punch to Torque's chest and knocked Roulette back with enough force that she lost her balance and ended up on her butt, before Kelly could retake charge of the situation.
"Stop! Let him go, let him hear me!" They all hesitated to release him as she sidled back to the edge of the sauna bed. "Danse, it's me. You're safe, it's just a dream."
She watched with melting tension as he faded back to himself, slowly registering his environment, and then her. The eyes of a panicked soldier in fight-or-flight mode were quickly replaced with the eyes of her lover, imploring her for clarity.
"What just-? Did I-? Have I hurt you?"
Kelly crawled to him and threw her weight on him in a bodily hug, lowering him back into the sauna bed for a moment until he could sit up into her embrace. "I knew you didn't mean to. It's not your fault." His arms corded strongly about her in a comfortable, familiar crush, as his whispered apologies tumbled into her ear. She kissed at his sweaty neck to massage him, all the while aware of the others slowly backing off, hovering awkwardly in the aftermath of the violent awakening.
That's right, back the fuck up. You just kidnapped yourselves a pair of mentally unstable, psychologically scarred, emotionally traumatized, chronically fucked up but highly trained hunter/killers. Have fun with that.
After Danse took stock, he eased Kelly back, scoured his eyes across the cavern and the people staring at him, and promptly said in a tone of suspicion, "Where are my pants...?"
Talking-Head took on the question. "Uh, we cleanse your gear, scrub radiation, and place in safe... place."
"...and my power armor?"
"Also in safe place."
"Excuse me if I don't make the effort in thanking you for it," Danse snarked, which scratched an itch Kelly had been holding back from herself. He was never one to bother sparing people's feelings, and for once, she was glad. "What do you want from us?" came the stern demand. Kelly felt his hand cinch tighter on the dip in her waist as he kept her close, and instantly felt safer no matter what was thrown at them next.
Red Roark stepped nearer, crossbow in hand, the other outstretched in supplication. "You have a choice. You can remain as our prisoners, to be used as bargaining chips in whichever ways we see fit. Or..." He relaxed his crossbow. "The enemy of our enemy is our friend."