Chapter 33: 9.3 Emotional Train Wreck

  Big Rick and the boss ninja watch as the railcars jettison from the exit portal overhead. The cars pitch downward, becoming a projectile heading for the rear end of the train’s main body. The two adversaries turn in order to flee further up the train only to see another crossing sign ding, ding, dinging in a rapid approach as it sweeps across the roof. They freeze, their only option being to look up at the incoming collision.

  Sarah’s grip is still around the sword’s handle, but she releases a hand as the cars adopt a rolling motion. She swings the other hand out behind her, extending it alongside her outstretched scarf as it waves violently above and behind her. When Big Rick’s flaming head turns back to meet her exalted expression, she voices her thoughts about them finally meeting. “Yippie ki-yay, motherfuckers!”

  Sarah pulls her sword free and hops into a portal as the railcars reunite, the projectile dislodging the rear of the train from its tracks and causing a derailing that rolls forward like dominoes.

  She tries to arrest her momentum by leaving a portal that sends her back upward and forward, only to exit in the face of three ducks. She quickly slices and turns, cutting one bird in half. Another hits her in the outside of her shoulder, eliciting a crunching sound as its head and wing fold in an unnatural way. And the last passes by with a flurry of quacking protests.

  Sarah opens another portal, and her spin sends her tumbling across the top of the train, where she rolls off the side, but manages grab a lip at the cost of letting go of her scabbard. Before she can complain, she looks back to see the train dominoes continuing to fall towards her. She puts her feet on the side of the train, then pushes off, passing into an opening portal behind her and taking a bad spill as she tumbles awkwardly along the tracks behind the train’s wreckage.

  Sarah finally pushes herself off the ground as blood trails down her right temple and her right shoulder marred with the consequences of sliding through the gravel between the tracks. She looks back towards the twisted metal and sporadic fires to see much of the train rolled over to the uphill side on the left. Other cars are buckled, folding to raise into the air while more dangle over the downslope side.

  After a brief search, Sarah finds her katana off to one side of the tracks, its metal catching the sun’s light as it rests in a patch of brush on the uphill side of the tracks. She touches her temple before pulling her hand away to see bloody fingertips. A few coils of her scarf unwind again, having spooled back around her body in the spin.

  Pain returns to her abdomen as she starts to move towards her sword. She winces and looks down to her hip, finding an entry wound from where she had been stabbed somewhere along the way. She prods the wound’s tender perimeter but sees the blood flow cease and the wound continue to close.

  Sarah shakes her head as she watches it happen. Just hope nothing broke off in there, she thinks, then looks back over to her marred shoulder. Shit! She quickly begins flicking rocks off her arm as the wounds try to close around them. Some of the rocks fold out of the blood from where the skin had started to grip them. After more frantic searching, she breathes easier, feeling like she got everything.

  Sarah’s focus shifts back down to the fabric over her chest, finding it all returned to red except for some minor blue marbling. That should be good enough, I guess.

  She whips her head back towards wreckage again as she hears something incoming, soon seeing the third duck flying down the tracks. When she notices the blue of its feathers, she thrusts a single pistol its direction and dispels several emptied casings before the avian corpse plummets in an uncoordinated mass of blood and feathers.

  Sarah doesn’t check the scarf’s color again, knowing full well why those ducks had been blue. She makes her way towards her katana as her body begins to move with greater ease. The train’s whistle sounds, but she just focuses on securing her weapon. When she finally fishes the weapon out of the thick brush, a portal opens next to her, and she orients on it with her weapon at the ready.

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  Sarah looks through the random portal and her tension fades as she sees her scabbard lying on the other side. She shakes her head as she steps through to retrieve it from the pine straw covered forest floor. That sure could’ve been useful information had someone left a proper instruction manual, she thinks in frustration. Her eyes pass over the nondescript blade covering and the cord wrapping just below the sheath’s mouth. Pretty durable considering you just fell off a mountain.

  The train whistle sounds again, releasing a short blast. She looks back through the portal at the red-painted steam locomotive that materializes on the tracks. Smoke billows out of a stack on top as it begins to move forward.

  Sarah nods to the train, knowing that it will be there any time she needs to sort out problems or to clear her head. She opens a new portal back to the cabin and returns to the table to find the rune on the journal glowing again. It gives her pause, but she takes up the book and opens to a new entry.

  ‘Dear Ducks,

  You lost the scabbard, or you lost the katana.’

  Sarah’s expectations plummet, and she plops down on the stool next to her. Why does this sound like I’m about to get lectured?

  ‘Each can be retrieved while using the other. The katana opens a direct portal while the scabbard contains a rune that will act like a beacon to indicate when you’re getting closer.’

  Could have saved me a heart attack on that random portal opening, but hey, water under the bridge.

  ‘Use the following rune in a preselected location, and an anchored portal will open automatically if you’re gravely injured. It will then close automatically once the katana passes through, so make sure you accompany it.’

  And what if this last item happened first? she thinks, her eyes growing wide. Were you just going to allow me to bleed out while this rune sat locked away in your conditional journal?

  Sarah forces the book closed with both hands and flings it over onto the tabletop. Her shoulders slump and her gaze falls. She then scrutinizes the makeshift sports bra as she sees a subtle black marbling. Well, shit.

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