55. The Naraka Derby


    The first thing they had to figure out was how to actually ride the damn thing. Luckily for Serac, that task fell solely to Zacko, as the current ‘wearer’ of [the Second Pledge].


    “Did I already tell you I’m not much of a vehicle person?” the man from the Realm of ‘cars’ grumbled as he climbed onto the front of the bone-woven basket. “I was never comfortable entrusting my life to a hunk of metal. Or stone. Or bone for that matter.”


    Serac jumped onto the platform behind him and was delighted to find that she could see over the much taller Manusya. The carriage had been built such that its rear half was elevated over the front. This of course left the Rakshasa completely exposed to any external threat, but it also meant she could give back as good as she got.


    “Well, you better get comfortable right quick, old man,” Serac urged, along with an unhelpful slap of Zacko’s back. “Don’t be bleeding out on my chariot, now.”


    “Let’s see…” Zacko ignored the banter and muttered to himself. “No reins, no horse, and four wheels instead of two. The only ‘chariot’-like part of this thing is the shape of the carriage! How the hell do I even…?”


    Serac watched impatiently as her chauffeur struggled to start the vehicle. To be fair to him, the chariot’s front panel was a uniform field of melded skeleton parts. None of it jumped out as an obvious operational feature—no steering wheel, no joystick, not even so much as a knob or lever.


    “What about that?”


    The question, put forth by a disembodied voice, was so uncharacteristically simple that it took Serac a moment to attribute it to Trippy.


    “You see something, Trippy? What is it?”


    “There. You’re looking at it right now, Wayfarer. Just off to the left of the panel’s center.”


    Serac squinted over Zacko’s shoulder. There, formed within a dense collection of irregularly shaped bones was a small yet distinct opening—a near-perfect circle in the middle of an incomprehensible mess.


    “You mean… that hole? But what’s Zacko meant to do with a ho—”


    “A hole? Where?” Zacko perked up, looking very much like he knew exactly what to do with a hole. He found it, then slapped his thigh with his non-[Ossified] hand. “Of course! I should’ve known!”


    “What? What should you have known?”


    “Well, this thing is a skeleton key, correct?” the Manusya enthused, holding up the lumpy rod that was firmly stuck inside his left fist. “And what do you (normally) do with a key? You stick it in a keyhole.”


    He did just that, inserting one end of [the Second Pledge] into the chariot’s ‘keyhole’. As soon as he did, the whole of the chariot went up in smoke.


    No, not smoke. Dust. Yes, Zacko’s insertion of the key had activated the chariot’s magic, alright, and in a form that was familiar to a pair of road-weary Wayfarers.


    “Yippee,” Serac deadpanned, noting that her [Ossify] gauge had started ticking up again. “More bone dust. This Bone Lord fella really commits to his themes, I’ll give him that.”


    “Well, in a roundabout way, this kind of makes sense,” Zacko quipped with a slight chuckle. “Vehicles have to run on fuel, right? Cars on gas. Living castle on blood. And a skeleton chariot on—”


    Bone dust. Even before its reinsman could finish his thought, the chariot began to move. Its Chakra wheels spun into high gear, driving the whole carriage forward with an abrupt burst of speed.


    “Whoa, there, easy!”


    The ride got off to a rocky start, with the carriage pitching and yawing as Zacko struggled to acclimate to his new role. Thankfully for a Serac that had to hang on for dear life, her chauffeur was a quick learner. As the Wayfarers rounded their first corner on the racecourse, they enjoyed a smooth exit and acceleration onto the ensuing straightaway.


    “Wait, so you are the one controlling this thing, correct?” Serac shouted to be heard over the wheels’ KSSHHH-ing. “Does this mean… you’re using Bone magic right now?”


    “I guess so!” Zacko shouted back with a shrug. “Must be the Trinket’s work. Or it’s thanks to this [Enlisted] effect. Or maybe it’s both.”


    For just a second, Serac took in this information with an unhappy frown. That frown quickly reverted to a vague sort of smile, however, and she turned her focus to more important matters. To their vehicular combat upon the Proving Grounds.


    Since the Wayfarers had taken their sweet time to get going, they were already far behind the other horse in the race. It took them a whole lap of full-throttle riding before they caught sight of the dust cloud that belonged to the Pishacha Charioteer.Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    The extra lap had allowed Serac to get a lay of the land. Even to her novice eyes, the Proving Grounds appeared to be as simple as a racecourse could get. In a word, it was an ‘oval track’, with two long, parallel straightaways joined by identical turning points on either end.


    The Wayfarers sped down one of the straightaways now, drawing ever closer to the Pishacha’s dust cloud. Serac could just make out a silhouette with its prominent shoulder pads, but the statue itself was still out of REVOLVER range.


    “Can we go any faster?” she yelled into the buffeting wind, losing her patience by the Ksana.


    “That’s a genius idea!” came the sarcastic reply (she deserved that one, Serac could concede). “Look, if I knew how to make this thing go faster, I’d already be—”


    And that was when the chariot did go faster, gaining a noticeable boost in power.


    Serac leaned forward to peer into Zacko’s face. His dumbstruck expression told her that he had no clue how he’d gotten his ride to speed up. Then she noticed that her [Ossify] gauge too had taken a sudden turn, now incrementing at an alarmingly rapid rate.


    “It’s the Pishacha’s dust cloud!” she voiced her intuition. “We’re in it now, and that’s given our own chariot extra juice!”


    “So we’re receiving a buff from the enemy’s aura?” Zacko reverted to his newfangled Wayfarer-speak. “But that should also mean—”


    As if in confirmation of Zacko’s inference, the Pishacha Charioteer pivoted in its platform before firing a volley of shoulder-arrows. The two chariots now shared the same dust-space, which meant their Bone magic—mutually buffed by each other’s ‘aura’—could travel freely in between.


    “Whoa!”


    Zacko let out another exclamation as he twisted his body one way then the other. It wasn’t clear whether the man’s gestures had much to do with it, but the chariot did respond to his will, snaking past most of the incoming arrows before the last one bounced harmlessly against a spinning wheel. Evidently, a NINEFOLD master’s dodge-tank capabilities were still in full effect, even in the saddle of a skeleton chariot.


    “That close enough for you, princess?” Zacko yelled, with his eyes still pointed on the road. “Time for you to dish out your own bit of magic!”


    The Wayfarers had indeed closed within REVOLVER range, but Serac knew that she couldn’t unload all of her ‘magic’ willy-nilly. For one thing, the Pishacha ahead of them was still protected by the dozen or so mini-shields that orbited it like satellites.


    Sure enough, Serac’s first burst of unimbued bullets did no harm, blocked by onyx bricks before they could find their target. Then, to her chagrin, three more replacement bricks materialized almost immediately.


    She emptied the rest of her cylinder. Same result. Except… this time, she noticed something strange about her own bullets. Then, as she reloaded, she racked her brains to find a solution.


    Her thinking time was momentarily interrupted by a pair of flying fists. One Zacko managed to swerve away from, and the other Serac ducked under, even as inspiration hit her.


    The preceding sequence had taught her three things. 1) The Pishacha’s mini-shields could regenerate, 2) the Pishacha couldn’t attack while its shields were regenerating (and vice versa), likely due to resource constraints, and perhaps most importantly, 3) Serac’s supposedly unimbued bullets were now imbued with Infernal energy.


    She didn’t know when or how it’d happened. She certainly hadn’t cast [Blood for Blood], but she saw it clear as day when her last two attacks had been blocked—black bullets disintegrating against onyx bricks.


    Must be this dust cloud again. Or this [Enlisted] effect. Or maybe both. Whatever it is, it’s not for me to question it—only to use it to my advantage.


    The conversion to Infernal damage wasn’t what interested her most, however. Rather, it was this notion that she herself now had access to some form of ‘Bone magic’. Combined with what she’d learned from her previous fights against the Footmen, the Archers, and the Chakras, she now had a pretty good idea how she was going to defeat the Charioteer.


    Luckily for her, she wouldn’t wait long to put her idea to the test. For the straightaway was coming to an end, and both chariots were about to enter a corner, with the Pishacha leading the way.


    This was it. This corner was do-or-die. Even a racing novice like Serac knew instinctively that corners bred chaos—and chaos gave rise to opportunity.


    “Whatever’s about to happen next,” she spoke calmly, just loud enough for Zacko to hear her, “just hold course and keep accelerating.”


    “What? But we’re about to—”


    “Trust me. This is how we win.”


    On this occasion, the opportunity for victory arose precisely because the Wayfarers were already losing the race. As the Pishacha ahead of them began to turn into the corner, its shifting angles exposed the side of its chariot—enough for Serac to have line of sight on a Chakra’s skull face.


    As if sensing what its opponent was about to do, the Pishacha opted for attack as a form of defense. It unleashed everything at once: a pair of flying fists together with a volley of arrows. Zacko held up his end of the bargain, staying the course and allowing the chariot to tank the hits in earnest.


    Serac too was ready for it, holding up PULVERIZER for protection, even as she aimed REVOLVER from under it. She held this aim through a series of mitigated hits ([59!], [47!], [47!] -> [153!]), and fired back.


    The first burst she sacrificed to the onyx bricks. A section of the Charioteer’s orbiting barrier fell away, clearing the way for Serac to square her aim onto the skull face. She had to wait a beat for her Stamina to recover, however, and she did so without worry, knowing that her enemy couldn’t regenerate its shields so soon after its full-on attack.


    Now, it was time to make good on her promise to Zacko. The Manusya had done his part by keeping the two chariots aligned through a barrage of fists and arrows. Now, it was up to Serac to aim, lock, and fire.


    [148!], [148!], [148!] -> [444!]


    [800 ?]


    As one rear wheel dissolved into Souldust, an entire chariot lost its balance. The Charioteer, along with its ride, went into a wild spin, sending up a veritable hurricane of bone dust in its careening wake.


    Absolute chaos. Exactly as Serac had dreamed it up. Her job wasn’t done, however. For a dust-hurricane of this magnitude was just crying out for a spark to set the whole thing aflame.


    A dumbfounded Zacko sped into the chaos, barely hanging on. Meanwhile, Serac slid a single cartridge into REVOLVER and raised it anew.


    [Chamber One: CATHARSIS]