005

At first glance, the raiders looked like a band of Ancient Greek warriors. They were clad in bracers and greaves, and they wielded spears and heavy shields. Their armaments were made of old bronze and leather, and everything carried a patina of weathered verdigris. For a second, Frank felt like he'd stepped back through time. He might have been meeting a band of hoplites at rest in the Aegean foothills, joking and grab-assing the way soldiers have done since the invention of war. But a closer look showed these were not Ancient Greeks. They were something else entirely, undeniably men but not quite human.

They looked like a primitive ancestor of man, a missing-link lost to the mists of time. They were sun-beaten and wiry, with elongated simian skulls and bodies covered in coarse, coppery hair. They had short, strong legs and gangly arms that dragged the ground as they walked. Their eyes, flat black and affectless, looked like pig eyes.

"Copper Men," Thune said.

"What does that mean?"

"Savages. Possessed of a crude intellect and a dangerous cunning."

"What's my move?"

Fight.

The voice thrummed in his head like electric guitar feedback.

Frank staggered, clutching his temples.

"What is it?" Thune said.

They're Nazis. They're Commies. Don't you understand? They hate America!

"America?" Frank whispered.

"Gather thyself. If the Copper Men sense weakness, they will pounce."

Two of the raiders climbed the steps, moving cautiously, their bronze shields raised to the bottoms of their eyes and their spears leveled at Frank. One growled like a dog.

"Listen, I'm not here for a fight." Frank raised his hands, palms out, the universal symbol for I'm cool, we're cool, and at this first sign of supplication, the lead raider launched his bronze-tipped spear.

Frank's first thought was that a thrown spear moved faster than he had imagined. It seemed to hang in mid-air for a beat, like a really hot fastball. His eye spotted it, and his brain made a reasonable estimate of its speed, but something moving that fast – something really cooking – was so much faster than his eye, or even his brain, could process. It was there and he was locked in on it, and then it was gone. His first instinct was to move – now! – but he'd already been hit.

Pain exploded in his right shoulder, and the force of the blow spun him around. He staggered but managed to stay on his feet. Gritting his teeth, he yanked out the spear, his hand coming away slick with his own blood, and then a voice boomed inside his skull.

Punish them!

Before he knew what was happening, he was moving. He vaulted over the two spearmen, landing behind them at the base of the steps. One of the raiders spun, lashing out with his shield, but Frank was too fast for him. He caught the raider with a right cross on the jaw, knocking him out with a single shot, just about the most perfect punch he'd ever thrown.

Years of stunt training had taught him how to movie punch, but this was different. This was a pro's punch, elbows tucked, core tight, perfect follow-through. More impressive than his technique though was how natural the punch felt, as if he'd thrown ten thousand just like it, as if he could throw that punch in his sleep.

The raider hit the ground and Frank sensed something new in the air. It was an in-between kind of sensation, not quite a smell, not quite a taste, but undeniably both. It had a color quality to it as well – yellow – although there was nothing to see, and this yellow-ness was something he just kind of sensed, a powerful synesthesia he'd never experienced before.

The skull set into the center of his war belt trembled, its curious tentacles of bone writhing like the thing was stirring from sleep. And suddenly he knew what he was feeling, knew it in the automatic, unconscious way he knew how to throw a perfect punch, or how to leap fifty feet at a run.

Fear.

Wake of Terror

Form: Vigilante

Ability Type: Reaction

Psychoplasm Cost: Passive

When you kill or incapacitate a creature, all enemies within line of sight must make a Will save or become Frightened of you for 10 minutes. An enemy Frightened in this way can repeat this save if you are no longer in its line of sight. An enemy that succeeds its Will save is immune to this effect for the next 24 hours.

Psionic Reserve: 100/100

He was sensing fear in the air. These beasts, these Copper Men, as Thune called them, were scared. And the tremor in the skull was a reminder of what he could do with that fear.

Eat it.

Grow strong from it.

These bastards are a cowardly and superstitious lot. Fear is the greatest weapon against them.

Except ... those weren't his words. Those were Sgt. Skulltaker's words, spoken inside his head, as natural as his own voice.

Before he had time to process this realization, the second raider jabbed at his face, the bronze tip of his spear stabbing through air. Frank shoulder-rolled, dodging nimbly. With two fingers, he cut a strange symbol in the air, a symbol he could not recall learning but that he'd seemed to know forever.

The eyes of the skull on his belt flashed with black fire. It lasted only an instant, there and gone in the time it took to blink. Frank felt a sharp pain in his navel, like he'd been stung by a wasp.

Fear Eater

Form: Vigilante

Ability Type: Action

Psychoplasm Cost: 5

Draw on the ambient psionic energy of the fearful, using it to fuel your power. Choose any number of target enemies within a 50-foot radius. For each target that is Frightened, gain +1 Might. For each target that is Terrified, gain +2 Might. This effect lasts for a number of minutes equal to 10 x your Might bonus.

When this effect ends, you are Fatigued for a number of minutes equal to 10 x your Might bonus. Once you target an enemy with Fear Eater, it can't be the target of this ability again for 24 hours.

Psionic Reserve: 95/100

Suddenly cold fire raced through his veins. His muscles swelled like the pump after an intense workout. His skin, already struggling to contain his bulk, stretched until it was near to splitting. He felt stronger than he'd ever felt before, a living engine of power, like he'd just done a bump of God's own cocaine.

The second raider was open for a straight left now and although Frank was a righty, he threw the punch without hesitation. He felt ambidextrous all of a sudden, as even-handed as a spider, and he held nothing back.

His fist smashed through the spearman's head.

A cone of blood and gore erupted from the back of the ruined skull. The man exhaled, the sound like a wet, strangling wheeze, and then he went limp, hanging motionless on Frank's bloody forearm.

Frank stood stunned. He had never seen someone's head explode, had certainly never caused someone's head to explode, and the sight of all that carnage terrified him. At first.

As his shock faded, he was left with an exhilarating hum through his body, a mixture of terror and power.

It felt good.

Wrong. But good.

The last time he remembered feeling this way was on the set of American Huckster: The PT Barnum Story, a straight-to-streaming biopic that was greenlit by a Canadian production company laundering money for the Montreal mafia. They'd used real tigers for the shoot, two brothers named Ivan and Oleg, and although they'd been raised in captivity, well-socialized, and well-medicated on shooting days, even being near them was terrifying. They were raw power and danger caged inside the bodies of two perfect predators. Sometimes he'd dream of them at night, lying alone in his drafty trailer.

Now, with one enemy at his feet, and another broken and lifeless before him, a strange thought occurred to him.

He was the tiger.

Frank pulled his arm free, his fist slipping out of the raider's head with a wet sucking sound. The lifeless body collapsed at his feet, blood pooling on the yellow sand. Trembling with adrenaline, he turned to find the simian horde fanned out behind him.

The raiders shrieked, stamping their feet and shaking their spears in a show of aggression. But no man of them advanced. His own vulgar display of power had cowed them, it seemed, and whatever collective courage they'd mustered only moments ago now evaporated like dew in the morning sun.

They were scared, that much was clear, but not broken. Such men were dangerous.

"Run," Thune shouted.

"Where?" The sound of his own voice surprised Frank. It was deep and scratchy.

"Northwest. This is a valley. We can climb out to safety."

Frank glanced up, trying to map his surroundings, but found himself hemmed in by sheer rock walls. The entrance to the temple was hidden in a wide inlet that cut into the raw face of a cliff, forming a natural cul-de-sac. The walls were adorned with crude drawings done in red earth pigment, and all manner of beasts leered down from the ancient rock, dog-faced demons, men with snakes for arms, towers of fire with uncountable eyes. It was like a jury of the damned judging his every move.

But it would take no great effort to climb the nearest cliff. He'd be halfway to the top with a single leap. And he felt dexterous enough to scale a surface twice as sheer.

Flee. It was sound advice. The path forward was wide enough that the raiders could not form a chokepoint. He could run past them, or even leap over them, with ease. He was cornered, sure, but he wasn't trapped.

So why expose himself to danger? What did he have to gain by confronting these miserable creatures?

The answer surprised him.

It wasn't that he had to fight. He wanted to fight.

What would Sarge do?

Glancing down, he took a quick survey of the prostrate raiders' weapons. He pulled a saber from the dead man's sword belt, a heavy, curved blade of sturdy bronze that bore a striking patina. It might have been forged just for him, the way it fit his hand, the way it felt perfectly balanced as he sliced the air. But as impressive as the saber was, it was the raider's bronze shield that truly caught his eye.

It practically called to him.

He slipped the shield off the dead man's arm and found it had a decent heft, fifteen pounds give or take. Holding it felt quite natural. He raised the shield overhead – his arm moving on its own, like a ritual practiced often and drilled to perfection – and sunlight flashed across its face, the rearing stallion emblem there burning with desert fire.

Vigilante Proficiencies

Form: Vigilante

Armor: Light Armor, Shields

Weapons: Firearms, Fists, Martial Weapons, Shield Fighting

With a roar he spun in place, gathering momentum, and then launched the shield at the scrum of raiders. The bronze slab whistled through the air and men dove out of its path. But a pair of raiders were too slow, and the shield sliced through them both, one and then the other, their severed trunks erupting in bloody torrents like water from an open hydrant.

Now!

He launched himself into the middle of the surviving raiders, kicking up a plume of soft sand as he landed. They were bunched too close together for spear fighting, and in their rush to unsheathe their sabers, he cut down two more with his sword, slicing one man neck-to-navel and lopping off the other's arm at the shoulder. Each time his blade bit into flesh, the skull in his belt squirmed pleasantly.

Vault. Quickly.

As if acting of its own volition, his body leaped out of the fray. It happened faster than he could think, his limbs seeming to move before he even had the intention of moving. For a second, he felt like two people, Frank Farrell inside, a demi-god warrior on the outside. And of the two, the Frank in him was just along for the ride.

The dissonance was unsettling, like a sudden hit of vertigo, but it faded quickly. The trick was to trust his muscle memory – to remember it was his muscle memory – and not step outside and observe himself from a distance.

He rolled forward as he landed, scooping up his bronze shield where it lay edge-up in the sand. Turning, he faced down the last of the raiders, sword and shield at the ready.

A blood-curdling roar split the air, the sound somewhere between a gorilla's bark and a wolf's howl. The raiders responded oddly to the call. They bent over, as one, so that their arms and chests scraped the ground, a primal imitation of the we're-not-worthy bow. A second ago they had been battling for their lives, but that single call had overridden whatever fight-or-flight mechanism they possessed. And now they lay prostrate and waiting.

A giant scorpion appeared from around a cliff behind them. He called it a scorpion, but that was only a point of reference. It was no more a scorpion than the raiders were human. It had the basic shape right – four pairs of legs, two pincers, a stinger – but the devil was in the details. It was twenty feet long, its carapace rippling in shades of rust-red and sandy-yellow, and covered in stiff, red spines. Each leg ended in a six-fingered hand, and each pincer was a mouth, complete with serrated teeth and a green tongue.

When he met the beast's stare, Frank felt an unpleasant scratching on his forehead, as though a mouse were trying to claw into his skull.

The raider mounted on the beast was bigger and brawnier than the other Copper Men. He wore a bronze helm plumed in black horse hair, and his coppery beard was threaded with dozens of finger bones. His breast plate looked like the carapace of a giant spider strapped across his chest, black and hairy and flecked with spots of green. He had four arms and wielded spear and saber, axe and shield.

"Leave the head of the witch-king," he barked across the hot sands, "or we'll take it from your corpse."