Shadows of Elysium: The Laughing King

Chapter 16: The Code: Camaraderie

Jasper snaps out of the second trance and averts his gaze from the fire full of lost souls, "you used to tell happier stories, Tree-bark."

"Sometimes we need a scary story to show us how to fear, and sometimes we need the truth, Jasper."

"You're getting too old for a hobby like that... but you're right."

"Even scary stories can have heroes. As long as people like you are still wandering around, there's hope."

"Well," Eddie Six-Fingers chimes in, "I think this bar hasn't seen proper use in far too long, and we've got at least one victory to celebrate."

A blackened piece came out of the fire. A lute with only three working strings and a body half eaten by the flames still dancing around the jagged edges even as it is held.

As Eddie plays a fast and firey strum, Jasper gives one final look at the flames moving to the tune.

This time, Temnota is stocking a room full of eyeballs. All of the loaded pickle jars and braided eyes turn to look out at him. Temnota smiles his wicked smile, forcing Jasper to look away.

"I heard there was a new restaurant out east called Karma. There's no menu: You just get what you deserve," Tree-bark finally wipes the drool from his chin, gives a hearty smile, and a light chuckle.

"Well, you've given me a lot to think about Jackie. And even more to do," and with that, Jasper goes to sit in the booth across from the man with bulbous eyes filled to the edge with pupil and a smile that spanned his face, but remained unconvincing.

"So, they call you Smiley?"

"Yeah, cause of my bread and butter," he gave an unnerving sarcastic grin before returning to a blank stare. "Before you ask, yes, I'm alive because we look alike."

"I mean, you wear it better. I was going to ask about that radio you've been working on."

He gave Jasper a look; not a very easy to define look, but definitely a look, "the signal was supposed to track them, and it does. Its just that it lets them track you. So, it's pretty useless now that they no longer fear the village.

"Really? That's the opposite of useless, friend. If I had one of those signal-things I could drop it off by the wall and make those taskforce fucks shoot it out with our main zombie problem."

"All signals attract them a little, but if you turn this one on they'll come running." He sets a small device, that looks like a lantern with antennas, on the table.

"With the radio-heads out of the way we could have an advantage we haven't had in thousands of years."

"What's that?" Smiley asked.

"We'd be connected! Everyone across the wastelands would be able to communicate!"

Smiley finally quit trying so hard to frown and let a massive smile stretch out. It was creepy enough to haunt the darkness beneath your eyelids, but full of hope.

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With that Jasper was back on the village streets, but something was off.

Some of the shadows were slightly deeper and they shifted in ways they shouldn't on a one lamppost street. The faintest flicker of a solid red eye appears in an ally-way before fading to black again. Jasper stopped in his tracks and noticed two more sets of eyes in ally-ways to the left. Smiles like the one on Temnota stretched wide to welcome him. Except, unlike the other shade these had nothing stitching closed those pearly white cheshire fangs.

The lamppost flickered to life with dozens of small flame-flys. Just as suddenly as it had come on it went out.

A flash of three silver claws was all that could be seen on the dark road. Jasper turned his back to the color and heard it scrape against his great sword. Only then did he pull the massive blade from its clip and swing wide in a circle.

The darkness converged on a humanoid shape holding a long wound across it's waist. Jasper feinted a downward strike before pinning the blade's edge into the wooden building behind the voidling. Its shocked (well, smiling) torso tumbled off of the blade while its legs and waist remained in an awkward squat against the wall. However, the torso was far from done, and the other two voidlings were still lost in the darkness behind.