Chapter III: Beauty and the Beast

“Are you alright, Miss Emma?” said Anna from the other bed.

“Just a little sore. Unity?”

Unity let out a soft groan. “I’m feeling exactly-exactly how you’d expect I’d be feeling after falling out of the top bunk. Why’d they have to stop the train like that? We must be a hundred miles from the nearest town-town.”

Still feeling somewhat stiff, I got to my feet. “I get the feeling they didn’t do that because they wanted to. Anna, do you know where the lights are?”

“Of course I do! Right away, Miss Emma.” Anna shot out of bed, grabbed something from the table, and a few clicks and the brief smell of gas later, the room was lit. 

I slipped past Anna to look out the window. It was, as Unity had said, extremely empty. Though I couldn’t see much in the dark, the terrain out to at least forty feet from the train was nothing but flat, hard ground and a few scattered grasses and clumps of bush. Beyond that, there was nothing but darkness, lit only by the tiniest sliver of a crescent moon. 

“Yeah, there’s nothing out there,” I said, getting my face out of the window. “Unless we had to stop the train to avoid a herd of cattle or something.”

“What’s a cattle?” asked Unity.

“Not important right now,” I said. “I guess I can head up to the front of the train, ask the… uhhh… the conductor or the engineer or whoever what’s going on.”

“Is it really necessary?” Anna asked. “Whatever problem has led to the train stopping will either resolve itself or it will not. It would be best if we just stayed here and were patient.”

I shrugged. “I want to offer my help. If there’s an obstruction or something, they might need as many people helping as they can—“

I was interrupted by a sudden, sharp sound coming from somewhere forward in the train. Muffled by the distance, it could have been a gunshot going off, or a steam-filled vessel bursting open. All three of us went totally silent and still, instinctually. I could hear, just barely, something coming from the same direction, like white noise, or muffled shouting. 

“Okay, I definitely need to check that out. You two stay here.”

I opened the door out into the hallway, lit only by the light shining out through the crack in my door. Muttering something under my breath about packing a flashlight next time, I carefully made my way towards the front of the car. More sounds were coming from up ahead, more white noise peppered with odd pops and clicks. 

I reached out for the knob of the door between this car and the next one. Just before I touched the brass I jumped as a loud crunching and rattling sound burst from ahead of me. It was louder than the other sounds, and clearer. Almost like it was coming from the next car. 

My heart rate spiked and I sucked in a breath. For a few seconds I froze, but there weren’t any more sounds I could hear from up ahead. Gritting my teeth, I took the doorknob, turned it, and started to open the door. 

It hadn’t opened more than a third of the way before I saw her standing in the hallway. She was huge, over six feet tall, with milk-white skin and a muscle-packed build. There wasn’t any hair anywhere on her body, which I could tell because she wasn’t wearing much more than a leather skirt around her hips. More ominous was the thing in her hand, a five foot long pole with a blunt metal hook on the end.

The moment I saw that image, looking away from me, I slammed the door shut and stumbled backwards. Whatever she was, she wasn’t one of the train’s passengers or crew, and I was starting to get the idea that she had something to do with the sounds coming from the front of the train. 

I turned and ran back towards my own room, ignoring the concerned questions from Anna and Unity. I had made it about halfway there when the door behind me was smashed open, the lock shattering as the half-human creature forced herself through. Looking back for a moment, I caught just a glimpse of red eyes glaring right through me and a lipless mouth frowning at my pitiful attempts to escape.

Just moments after my fingers touched the door, the metal hook slipped around my neck and yanked me off my feet. My hands shot to my neck, trying to pull the hook off of me as I was dragged away. She was pulling me along the ground like I hardly weighed anything. While I may be small, I’m not that small; pulling me around like that must have taken some serious strength.

I couldn’t scream, and struggling didn’t accomplish much more than scuffing the floor a bit. But the one thing I could still do was think, and I had an idea. Still holding onto the hook with one hand to keep myself from getting strangled, I reached up with the other hand and grabbed the handle of the hook. Then I shifted the other hand around to the side of the hook, and with all of the strength I still had, used both of my hands plus my shoulders to twist to one side. 

To no small degree of surprise, it worked, and I slipped out of the end of the hook and on to the ground. There wasn’t any time to catch my breath before I was up and running, sprinting back to my room. I don’t think the pale woman noticed for a couple of seconds, because by the time I had entered the room she was only beginning to turn around. I slammed the door shut and locked it this time for good measure. A second later the door was nearly knocked off of its hinges by the creature slamming into it.

“What in the seventh hell is going on?” Anna screamed.

“No time! Where’s my sword?”

Anna and I both dashed for the luggage pile in the corner, which thankfully still had the saber case still sitting on top of it. Unity, meanwhile, drew a knife from somewhere in her voluminous dress and stood at the ready right in front of the door. 

I opened up the sword case and drew my saber with as much speed as I could before dashing back to the entrance, next to Unity. “Unity, get behind me. This thing is dangerous.”

“With all due respect, Miss-Miss Emma, I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to go down fighting.”

I nodded at Unity, raising my sword to face the door, point ahead to catch a charge. And not a moment too soon, for the second time the tall woman slammed into the door, it burst open, splinters flying into the room and nearly hitting me in the face. I flinched for a moment, only to return my sword point to its position right in front of her chest. 

“Don’t make me hurt you,” I said, trying to make myself as bit as possible. I’m five-foot-nothing, so it didn’t work very well. 

She grimaced, taking a step closer. I responded with a quick slash, aimed to hurt her without killing. In a second, a long red slash appeared across her stomach, just below her breasts. She didn’t do much more than flinch lightly, looking down at the wound. Neither of us took a step forwards or back. 

I looked at her face, and I couldn’t see so much as a hint of hesitation or fear in those icy eyes. Then I looked back down at the wound, and for a second I thought I was hallucinating. The cut was already half-closed, and as I watched it sealed shut, some of the blood even seeming to crawl back inside. In maybe ten seconds after I’d struck her, the cut was totally gone, leaving only a few speckled droplets of blood on her skin. 

“Oh, that’s just not fair…” was all I was able to say before she attacked. 

She was strong, really strong, and even with the rather awkward hook-pole she was using, she swung with incredible power, enough that I was sure she’d break my sword or knock it out of my hand if I tried to parry. My small size and great speed that, back then, surprised even me, let me duck just out of the way of her first strike. Unity wasn’t so lucky; she charged in with her knife and got bludgeoned in the skull. I immediately maneuvered myself between the pale woman and her unconscious body; she might kill me, but she wasn’t taking Unity before that happened. 

We fought for a short while, her wide, sweeping strikes filling almost the whole space of the room while I narrowly ducked and dodged aside. But that was the problem; the narrow space of the train car gave me precious little space to avoid her, and even with my speed she clipped me a couple of times, leaving me with sore ribs and a leg that only followed orders when it felt like it.

There were a couple of times when I could have slipped in and ended it with a quick slash or thrust of my sword, but I couldn’t. Every time I considered it, the images flashed back into my mind. The green ring, the bloodless face of Regan Leyrender. I couldn’t kill again. Never. It wasn’t long before I had that choice taken away from me. 

I think she realized my hesitation. With a grunt, she charged forward, pinning me against the wall with her body. I shifted my sword aside, and her hands wrapped around my throat. 

The hook was nothing compared to this. In about two seconds, I had been thoroughly cut off from air, without even a hope of freeing myself from her grip. I started to black out, my windpipe collapsing, as the pale woman leaned in and opened her mouth, revealing rows of sharp teeth.

“I’m so sorry. It’s nothing personal.”

Those words were scarier than the ever-closing prospect of imminent death. Everything went dark, my vision narrowing to a view of that lipless mouth and those rows of teeth...

The pale woman was suddenly yanked backwards, out through the door and into the corridor of the train car, so quickly that she didn’t have time to let go of my neck until I had been yanked forward a couple of feet. I spent a couple of seconds on all fours, catching my breath and being surprised that I was still alive. Struggling to regain my strength, I stood, seeing a vicious battle in the corridor in front of me.

  Miss Rook was wearing only a loose robe of sorts, and she was covered in blood. It wasn’t hers. She was breathing heavily, possibly from battle, or possibly from having to run all the way from the front of the train. Her arms were shaking with tension, holding the pale woman to the ground in a wrestling hold. A second later, she lifted her up off the ground, hurling her backwards over her shoulder and sending the mass of pale muscle slamming headfirst into the floor, hard enough that the entire train car rattled. 

There’s one other thing I forgot to mention about Miss Rook: she can be freakishly strong when she needs to be. Defending my life counted as a need, which was very nice to know. 

Almost the moment that the pale woman landed on the ground, she tried getting back up again, her broken bones gruesomely forming back together. Rook was having none of that, ripping the hook out of her hands, snapping it in half, and jamming both broken ends through her torso. With a look of disgust, Rook stomped on the pale woman’s skull, shattering it while driving it into the wood of the floor. I felt a little sick.

“Good to see you’re alive, Emma,” said Rook in her natural accent. “I wouldn’t have been too happy had you been kidnapped or murdered, trust me.”

“What the hell was that thing?!” I shouted.

“Ghoul. Stronger, faster, damn near impossible to kill. They’re a plague on this part of Bluerose.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Emma, catch,” said Rook, tossing something small and metal my way. 

I just barely caught it, after which I realized she had just thrown me a revolver. “Why did you give me this?”

“More may be coming,” Rook said, quieter now. “Aim for the head; that tends to keep them down longer. If you can’t, three shots to the torso seem to do the trick.”

I looked down at the gun in my hand, then back at Rook, my eyes wide. “Don’t you need a weapon?”

“Well, I did have a shotgun, but it got bent out of shape over the skull of a particularly ornery ghoul.” Rook raised her fists into a fighting stance. “But I don’t need a weapon to fight well, trust me.”

If there was any one person in the whole world who I would believe that statement about, it was Rook. And it wasn’t a moment too late, either. One of the windows of the train shattered, scattering glass over the corridor. A second later, a ghoul crawled through the open window, dropping into a roll. I didn’t pick out many details beyond the chainmail shirt and the bandoleer of clay pots on her back when, running on instinct, I fired off a shot. A puff of red burst from the side of her torso and she collapsed. A sudden wave of nausea ran over me, the green ring on a pale hand, the smell of antiseptic. I wasn’t going to be able to do that again.

Only a couple of seconds passed before another ghoul crawled through the window, stepping over the body of her dead comrade with a grimace of hatred. She was clad similarly to the first ghoul, but instead of the hook-thing she held a long, thick rope between her hands, in position to strangle someone or start tying them up. 

Of course, with Miss Rook in the hallway, she didn’t stand a chance. Letting out a warrior scream loud enough to make me jump, Rook charged, slamming into the ghoul at full speed and carrying the both of them to the ground. They grappled back and forth, punching and kicking, shouts of fury and various profanities emerging from the battle. Rook quickly took the upper hand, wrenching the ghoul’s arm out of its socket before completely shattering the forearm. It wasn’t fun to watch, but it was also plainly necessary, because before she’d even finished forcing the broken end of the ghoul’s bones through her skin, the bones were already forcing themselves back together. 

The first ghoul, the one I’d put a bullet in, stood up and started to stagger down the train car towards Rook and the other ghoul, palming one of the ceramic pots. I raised the revolver, carefully pulling back the hammer. All I had to do was aim carefully and pull the trigger and she’d have a bullet in her skull. It was all I had to do. Green ring, smell of antiseptic, Regan Leyrender’s face. I couldn’t do it. 

“Ghoul behind you!” I shouted.

The ghoul raised the pot above her head, but Rook heard my warning just in time. She jumped up, throwing her entire body weight backwards. Her shoulders slammed into the ghoul’s stomach and she collapsed backwards. The clay pot fell to the ground, shattering open into a cloud of ash and smoke. I curled in on myself, growing sick, reminding myself over and over again that I am not a killer.

The fight between Rook and the two ghouls was some of the most brutal I’d ever seen. The ghouls were tough, incredibly so, recovering from broken bones and bruises and worse injuries with terrifying speed. Rook had no such freedom; every cut and bruise and sprain remained in her skin just like any other person. And yet she held the upper hand. Every glancing blow was met with a hammer-strike that shattered bones, every hold broken out of and repaid with efficient brutality. It was disturbing to watch.

It was maybe a minute before the two ghouls were left on the ground, two broken, bleeding, twitching piles. Their wounds were still healing together, but Rook didn’t seem to think they were a threat. Instead, she wheeled around and walked over to me. I was almost afraid she was going to turn me into a shattered puddle alongside the ghouls.

“Why didn’t you fire?” she asked. Rook didn’t sound angry; in fact she didn’t sound like she was having any emotions at all. The burning rage was entirely in her eyes. 

I tried to stop crying long enough to squeeze out a coherent response, but the shame at my miserable state only made it worse. “I couldn’t… I can’t…”

Rook crouched down and yanked the gun out of my hands. Probably for the best. Without a word she stood up and turned right back to the ghouls. Without mercy or pity she fired twice, one bullet into each skull. Then she set the gun down and returned to me. 

“Now, let’s try this again. Why didn’t you fire?”

“I…” Couldn’t say anything. Come on, Emma, take a breath and say it. Wiping the wetness from my cheeks, I sat up and straightened my back. “They’re people. One of them talked to me. I can’t kill them.”

Rook sighed, slumping down against the wall of the train car, the anger subsiding. “Of course. Too much sympathy for your own damn good.”

“I’m not a killer,” I said, my eyes fixed firmly on a spot of undamaged floor. “I know that. It’s how I stayed in one piece after the duel. I can’t do it again.”

“Then why’d you shoot at the first ghoul through the window?”

“That was just reflex!” I said, glaring at Rook. “I wouldn’t have fired if it wasn’t. I’m not a killer.”

“You’re going to have to learn at some point, trust me.”

“Learn? You say it like murder is a skill. Why would you even say something like that?”

Rook met my glare with so much force that I had to avert my eyes. “Bluerose is not a place for pacifists. Perhaps somewhere deep within the fat, languid heart of the Cassandran Empire there is a place of safety, but it is not here. You need to be able to fight.”

“There has to be a difference between fighting and just… killing,” I said, mumbling. “There is, isn’t there?”

“Perhaps,” Rook said with a shrug. “Though when it comes to ghouls, it is hard to do one without the other. They don’t take well to being restrained, and neither do they give up easily.”

I looked down the corridor at the bodies and regretted it. At least they’d stopped healing. “What’s their deal, anyway? None of them tried to steal any valuables… And how do they heal like that?”

“You don’t know?” Rook asked.

“No. Heard the name before, but never seen a real one.”

“Ha! Of course you don’t know, I forgot who I was talking to.” Rook suddenly straightened up, her eyes cold but her words imbued with fire. “Ghouls are flesh-eaters. They find people, in isolated settlements or unprotected railcars, and they take them alive. The ones who don’t escape or end their own lives are held for days or weeks, until the time comes when they are killed and cut apart for the whole tribe to feast. They will not stop until they have either taken too many losses to continue, or until they have taken you as well.”

A shiver passed down my spine. “Oh god…”

Rook stood up, switching back to her false accent. “Now then. I have to attend to the safety of my guards. Emma, I hope that I will not have to deal with this reluctance again.”

I nodded in a way that, if I was lucky, would look less than completely untruthful. Rook gave me a curt nod in return and walked off. 

“Are they-they all gone?” asked Unity from the bunk room.

“They are!” I said, realizing that I’d nearly forgotten about Anna and Unity altogether. “Are you okay? You took a pretty big hit to the head back there.”

“I was only out for a couple of seconds-seconds,” she said. “Didn’t feel much like fighting after that.”

“Oh, good.”

It took me a solid minute before I felt up to the task of standing. Even then, I did so only long enough to stumble back into bed. About ten minutes later, I was re-awoken by Sir Margaret and several members of her staff, who had come to make sure that I wasn’t dead, and also to get the corpses off the train. Nobody came by after that, and given that I was dead tired, blissful unconsciousness came soon after.

SaffronDragon

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