There is nothing left but desperation, I think.

Desperation clad in steel.

...

It finally started raining again.

Now they need to trudge through the mud to get to me.

Some of them trip.

Laughter hurts my throat.

...

Lightning struck the tower again last night.

That makes five times this week.

I wonder how long it will take the basin to fill?

...

I've been told that there are only five survivors in the whole world.

No one has told me this.

I just know.

No I don't.

...

Bones make good windchimes if you hollow them out right.

...

Every overhang on the tower has a windchime now.

It took a month to make them all.

Maybe I should have paced myself.

...

Bink bink bonk donk bink.

Donk.

Bink. Bonk.

...

XChimesX

...

Rain again.

Maybe the water will reach the tower this time.

...

Nope

...

20(?) people were running towards my tower.

They weren't going to make it.

I killed them all with the 90 mms.

They screamed.

They would have screamed longer if I hadn't.

...

I think I should leave.

I haven't been sleeping well.

...

I've packed what I can.

I'll take a new journal.

I'm sorry.

...

Dear child, I write this so that your spirit may know peace.

We finally clawed our way out of the bunkers, after so many years.

We're remembering how to live in the sun.

We've been buring every corpse that we come across.

We fixed what we could.

We glassed the rest.

“You awake with a start, confused by a moldy ceiling and the boarded-up window in front of you. In a flurry of movement, you get up and reach for the knife in your belt, only to discover it isn’t there. Immediately after, you collapse back onto the cot, overwhelmed by the pain in your chest and head.”

Yorick did all of those things, groaning as his head hit the pillow.

“You finally notice the voice narrating your every move, and wish desperately that it would shut up for just a few moments, but to your dismay, it continues... Until a clearly unwashed hand reaches out and-”

Yorick’s hand clamped over the mouth of the wiry man leaning over his cot.

“Enough with the narration, Garis”, he growled, although the pain from that movement tapered it into another groan. He paused, but recovered fairly quickly.

“Where are we? What happened?” He gave the man a look, doing his best to impress a lack of patience, before releasing his grip.

With a flash of annoyance, Garis brushed the hand aside and got up. Yorick watched him walk quickly to a small sink at the other side of the room. The man was wearing all black, with disheveled hair to match, and still hadn’t managed to pick up a tan despite the month they’d already spent in Mexico. With deliberate movements, he turned the faucet, and splashed the water on his face, all the while muttering to himself. Yorick couldn’t pick out the words, but he knew there was nothing nice being said about him in there.

After drying his face with a paper towel, Garis walked back over, and sat down with a deep breath.

“Of course” he said, regaining some measure of composure, “We’re in Safehouse 87, on the outskirts of Mexico City.”

“What about the penthouse suite?” Yorick interrupted, “We were all there last night. I remember that much.” Doing his best to ignore the pain, he managed to prop himself up on his elbow and lean his back against the neighboring wall.

“Well, ” continued Garis, his patience obviously being tried, “as the night wore on, you became blackout drunk, and made several of us very uncomfortable with your jokes.”

“Ah.”

“Indeed.”

“Did I tell the one about the dragon and the bartender?”

“You did.”

“How did Antonio take it?”

“Rather well, actually.”

“Huh, good on him.”

“Although it turns out that Martha’s mother is Spanish.”

Yorick grimaced, “And that’s how I got in this state?”

Garis paused in thought, “Well, I suppose that’s how you got knocked out the first time.”

Yorick’s brow furrowed. “This doesn’t have anything to do with how we ended up here, does it?”

“Only tangentially.”

“So what happened after that?”

With that question, Garis’s lips pursed, and his eyes looked off into the middle distance.

“We were attacked,” he said, speaking his words slowly, like he was having trouble processing them himself, “Assassins wearing silver hair and bright, blue eyes crashed through the windows while we were watching a movie. They killed Anna and Professor Darring before any of us could react. After that...” Garis’s shoulders slumped.

With those words, Yorick felt the world falling away. He had cared deeply about both Anna and the professor. They were like older siblings to him, to almost everyone. And because of that, he could guess what had come next.

Careful not to let his own emotions show, he watched Garis. It wasn’t often that the man was quiet. But now, he just stared down at his knees, his eyes lost in the memory.

The cot creaked as Yorick pushed himself up to sit at the edge of the cot, just to the right of Garis. The pain was just as bad as before, but he threw up a mental wall to block it out. He would deal with that later.

“How many of them did you all kill?”

“None.”

“What?”

Garis slowly shook his head in disbelief.

“Even while pouring out everything we had,” he said, “They matched us. We were breaking every code and limitation the Council had ever placed on us, but it didn’t matter. How could it not matter? You would think it should have mattered. I don’t unders-” Daris tensed up and clamped his mouth shut, but his eyes still shown with impotent fury.

Yorick nodded sympathetically, but worrying thoughts were racing through his mind. Daris was shutting himself down. He had only done that once before. Years ago. Yorick took a breath to steady himself, and got up.

“And what about me?” he asked, “What was I doing in all this? Because I know, blackout or not, I couldn’t have been out with all that magic in the air.”

Daris let out a shuddering breath and looked up at him, a tight smile on his face.

“If you hadn’t woken up, I don’t think we would have survived.”

Yorick grimaced, “Did I hurt any of you?”

The other man shrugged, “Nothing major. The ones that got in your way should have known better.”

“But...” Yorick began, but hesitated, not really knowing what to say.

Garis stood and walked to where an undershirt and a ratty windbreaker lay folded on a table in the middle of the room. Without looking, he tossed the clothes to Yorick and bent down to pry open the floorboards.

“It’s not worth beating yourself up over your usual lack of self-control, Yorick.” he said, “The worst they got were burns and bruises, and they made it out of bed just fine this morning.”

By the time Yorick had his clothes on, Daris was already rising back up, a vial of dark-blue liquid in his hand. Yorick eyed it worryingly.

“The safehouses usually have more than that, don’t they?” he asked. Garis tilted the vial back and forth in his hands as he inspected it.

“The others already took them”, he replied, “They left a few hours back, at the crack of dawn.” His gaze shifted back to Yorick.

“You needed more time to heal, and I drew the short-straw.” he said with a wry grin. Yorick chuckled, in spite of himself. No one ever volunteered to wait by his bedside. It was always the loser.

Still, with his windbreaker on, he felt marginally better than before. He walked over to where Garis stood, and gently pinched the bottom of the vial between his thumb and index finger.

“To the Light Fantastic,” he said, and sparked the potion with the small amount of power he had left. Instantly, the liquid brightened to a brilliant blue, and began to fizz slightly. Yorick looked to Garis.

“Split it?” he asked, “Fifty fifty?”

The other man nodded, and lifted the vial to his lips, draining about half of the mixture. Yorick did the same, polishing it off.

He was wholly unprepared for the surge of energy that came coursing through his system, and very nearly vaporized the building.

He caught himself at the last moment, digging his fingernails into his forearm beneath the windbreaker to ground himself. Had he really been using that much power the night before? He stared down at his arm, trying to keep everything under control.

Garis was looking at him funny, no doubt, but he did that often.

“I’m fine,” he said, trying to head off any questions, “Just… Just making sure I’ve got everything under control.”

“No doubt” came the reply.

Smart ass.

“So are we going?” Yorick asked, aiming for a change of topic.

“You don’t even know who we’re looking for” countered Garis.

“Ay, but if the bastards were as strong as you remember, then that narrows our options.”

Garis watched him warily.

“You’re about to get violent, aren’t you?” he asked.

Yorick began walking towards the apartment door, looking down at his right hand as he did. The middle finger had managed to pierce skin, and had a bit of bright red blood marking its tip. He almost imagined that he could smell the metallic tang, taste it in the back of his mouth.

With barely a thought, he let a flickering of newly-crafted energy play across the hand. Arcs of light jumping from finger to finger as it clenched and unclenched.

Anna and Darring.

They didn’t deserve to die.

They really shouldn’t have died.

It was a mistake that would have a price to pay.

Because, despite the hangover, and the pain, and the grief, he was still an archmage.

Yorick turned back to Garis, sure that his eyes probably looked wild, and not caring in the slightest.

“Let’s kick open a few hornet nests.”

Despite his best efforts, David couldn't keep the stones from singing as he sprinted past. From behind, they let out a deep warbling that echoed throughout the valley. He grit his teeth in frustration. Overhead, a falcon let loose a piercing shriek in response, and for the fifth time that day, David's hand darted to the gun in his inner chest pocket. And once again, he caught himself at the last moment.

Better to keep running.