Phoenix smiled widely as the unicorn approached him. He was relaxing, sitting casually in a vast field of emerald green grass, its millions of dewy blades gently swaying to inaudible funky beats as waves of wind wafted gently through the scene. Phoenix's adventuring gear lay strewn care-free across the lawn, the man himself bare-naked, feeling the cool, wet blades on his tired skin. Mr Pumpernickel had just left to go get some fizzy drinking water from the magic stream up the hill a ways, which was absolutely fine with Phoenix - more unicorn for him.

It was the most perfect of perfect days. The smog was a brilliant, luminous blue above him, stretching to infinity in all directions, and the birds were twittering in perfect harmony, singing one of his favourite Waste tunes, 'Why Does Radiation Do This To Me?'. But Phoenix had to admit that, despite the sheer perfectivity of the day, it was somewhat mired by the incessant thumping in his head.

The ache had started as a dull pressure in the back of his skull, but while Mr Pumpernickel was discussing his theories on particle physics and how to repair the Waste with an army of pixies - which, Phoenix felt, was quite probably the very cause of the ache - it had grown into a significant throbbing. Now it held an almost tribal rhythm, booming and clattering through his skull like, well, like an army of pixies.

Boom.

Boom boom.

Phoenix twitched. But he wasn't about to let this terrific day go to waste. Pain be damned! He reached out calmly with his muscular, hairy arm and gently beckoned for the unicorn to come closer. It was such a splendid beast, he couldn't help but want to stroke its glorious white scales, and feel one of its four muzzles nuzzle his palm in that adorable unicorny way.

Boom boom.

Boom.

Its mane was a glittering star field, streaking out behind the unicorn's long, snake-like necks as though it were the tail of a spectacular, interstellar comet. Its duck-like webbed feet trotted almost silently on the fresh grass as the beast moved towards Phoenix on its six insect legs.

Boom.

Boom boom.

Phoenix thought he could hear chanting now; the voices of many people gathered in one place. It was a distant echo, almost insignificant, except for the fact that it was growing louder, and coming from the unicorn's many nostrils.

Boom boom.

Boom.

The beast was close, now. Phoenix could feel its perfumed breath wafting over him with each of its slow, hot breaths. He leaned forwards to place a hand on its nearest head, but the unicorn hesitated.

"It's OK, buddy," Phoenix cooed softly, letting it sniff him first. "I won't hurt ya."

Its heads all looked at him with the innocent scrutiny of an animal contemplating bite or flight, then it whinnied, and its voice was an orchestra of cosmic sounds swirling around Phoenix's head in the voice of a thousand microscopic bagpipes. And the bagpipes all produced the same words.

"Constellator. Constellator. Constellator."

Boom.

Boom boom.

Suddenly Phoenix was on an altar, bound by rope at his hands, ankles, torso and even neck. Sweat formed on his naked flesh as he struggled and panicked, desperately trying to free himself from this insufferable bondage so he could stroke the unicorn, which was now standing on its hind legs some distance away. He saw it fold its insect arms across its chiselled, muscular chest, reaching down with its second set of arms to scratch at ... oh, what was that dangling by its knees?

...oh.

Phoenix woke up.

Immediately, his senses were ambushed by booming and chanting, ramping the pain in his head from feeling like being hit with a hammer to a searing atomic explosion. His vision swam in front of his eyes, but it didn't know any good techniques so mostly it just splashed about unfocused and crying for help. It seemed pitch-black, but Phoenix could make out vague orange-tinted waves above him as the smog continued to fight amongst itself. Groaning, Phoenix tried to reach up with his hand to massage the battlefield that was his skull, but his arms wouldn't move. For that matter, none of his body was free.

The bondage wasn't a dream.

He was on an altar, so that too wasn't a dream. It was a giant concrete slab of a thing, bitterly cold on whatever bare skin touched it, but brilliantly smooth - as though someone had kept it polished, which was unusual in the Waste. Keeping things was not as easy as acquiring them. Phoenix took a few long, deep breaths and pushed away thoughts of what goes between a unicorn's legs, wracking his brain to do something useful. He tried to think like an adventurer.

Every hero ended up in a position like this some time or another. It just went with the territory. Sometimes it was an altar, other times it was a roasting spit above a fire. One time it was even a leather and chain swing hanging in the bedroom of a- actually, you know what? Phoenix had opted into that one, so it didn't count. Anyway, after some careful, scientific wriggle checks, he determined that his ankles, hands, torso and neck were all bound. His hands and neck already burned from the constant rubbing of old, wet, bacterial rope on bare skin, and his back and ass were debating between feeling either completely numb or excruciatingly painful. Phoenix had apparently being lying here some time. This, to the initiated, possibly meant that the evening was going to be one of those ceremonial drags-out-for-ages type of ordeals, or else he'd be dead already. To the uninitiated, of course, it just meant, "Oh, my back and butt are a bit more painful than usual. I wonder if someone will free me soon..."

The booming and chanting continued to wheel around Phoenix's head, a vicious noise that seemed more intent to punch his brain through his ears than to maintain any semblance of musical timing. It was a drum beat, of this he could determine now, or at least it was many drum beats all happening in a vaguely similar time frame, but not quite all at once as was presumably the idea. At least the chanting was doing well - everyone seemed to have the knack for saying the name of their lord in a perfect, creepy unison.

"Constellator. Constellator. Constellator."

Boom

Boom boom

Phoenix flinched as a particularly loud thump passed through his ear drum with all the grace of a brick to the face. "Hey," he yelled, "could you guys keep it down? I'm trying to come back from unconsciousness here."

Nobody heard him.

Blah, he thought. Visual check next.

He tried turning his neck as best he could, pushing through the nauseating dizziness that threatened to drown him in his own vomit. He realised that he had some limited side-to-side motion available. With great pain and effort, he rolled his head to the right.

Cultists. Everywhere. All over the damn place. They were in some kind of hilltop square at the peak of Mount Butt, or what at least appeared to be the peak in amongst the crushing blackness that was the Waste night. White-speckled cultists were crammed together in a wide arc surrounding him to the right, and through the bobbing, hooded heads he could see that the thick throng continued a ways down the hill, too. The Starry Place lay beyond, with a veritable skyscape of twinkling lights marking the winding little streets of the cramped town. They were electric lights, Phoenix could discern, but they were dim, perhaps meant only for discouraging Things more so than for navigation. That was fairly common, particularly in Can't Be Buried where electric infrastructure was as limited as humans that lived past fifty years. It was easier at night to bump into objects hazardously placed at shin height (as was always the case) than to find the means to run high-power street lights for an entire town. None of the house lights were on as far as Phoenix could make out, which suggested that the whole starry population was up here at the square. But then, Phoenix thought the entire mountain was writhing and rolling like a fuzzy caterpillar on an unstable boat, so who knows what was going on. His woozy head clearly didn't.

To his left was the more interesting stuff. Phoenix could make out a tall, long building built around some kind of metal Old World structure; a veritable mansion compared to the small-statured huts present in the rest of the Starry Place. Thick wisps of pale smoke dribbled out of the gaps around its ornately decorated double-doored entrance, and an avenue of star-shaped flaming lanterns guarded a cobble-stone path from there to where Phoenix now lay. Interestingly, out of the right-hand side of this large structure came two cables higher than a man's height, each of which slinked off into the Starry Place below. Chairs hung precariously from the thick metal cables at regular intervals, some of which seemed cushioned and designed with safety in mind, and the rest ... well, you'd be clinging for dear life if you sat on one, let's just say that.

Standing either side of the star-covered double doors were cultists with similarly tassled spears as the gate guardians, their faces shrouded in shadow. Nearer Phoenix, a small group of robed cultists had split off from the main mass. One he recognised as a perpetrator from Smack-dab, whose face was grumpy and his arm missing. In his other hand he clutched a long wooden bat, a stain of blood still congealing on its wider end. Blood that Phoenix thought might have come from his beautiful head.

There were two other figures next to the one-armed Batty McHitsYouFromBehindLikeaCoward. One was a slender woman who grasped a metal bugle tightly in her fingers and tapped her feet anxiously. The final figure, standing next to a tall stone table upon which was a small, shiny wooden box, was an older man, hunched at the shoulders and tattooed extraordinarily heavily with stars, comets and wavy lines. The lines might once have been connected, indicating whooshy little movements, but the onslaught of age on the man's face and driven vast faults through the art. He was, most assuredly, the human equivalent of a sultana.

BOOM BOOM.

BOOM BOOM BOOM.

The thumping clamour of drumming increased in enthusiasm (but not skill), and the crowd started to lose its perfect harmony. Excitement washed quickly through the buzz and folks appeared no longer able to quietly chant, instead screaming wildly the name of their lord, whistling and hollering. They may as well have sawed off the top of Phoenix's skull and yelled straight into his brain goop, for what it was doing to his head. Phoenix writhed on the altar, eyes tight shut, begging whatever gods he could think of for the noise to end. Somehow, though, he didn't think Gachook had jurisdiction in this town.

Then, smoke around the ornate closed doorway started sputtering out in thicker clumps, clawing its way quicker through the gaps and spilling into the sky to join the roiling smog above, which must have been like Valhalla to smoke.

BOOM BOOM.

BOOM BOOM BOOM.

BOOM.

...

...

The drumming had stopped.

The crowd followed suit.

An eager hush fell upon the landscape, with barely a murmur escaping into the bitter night air. All eyes were glued to the wafts of white smoke pouring out this strange door. More importantly, though, Phoenix watched as the shrivelled old man near the altar carefully opened the wooden box next to him and produced what could only be described as a dagger - not a knife, but a bloody dagger. Its gilded handle was brilliantly polished, with perfect star shapes carved into the glittering metal. The blade itself rose plump from the hilt, as though it had seen a long, happy life of consuming many an altar victim. It sparkled as a mixture of electric and fire light danced off the flat blade. The decrepit old man held it with barely a withered finger and thumb in each hand, a satisfied smile playing between the deep wrinkles of his crusty face. This was a man who knew his duty was important, and relished in every second.

Phoenix was glued to the blade, his mouth forming an O and his eyes wide open.

Sometimes, he thought to himself, I hate it when I'm right.

* * *

Terrance Leeland wandered alone, cold, and in a seething fury. His stump arm ached with every throb of his pulsating, dark heart, and his mind raced with the brutal images of just how he'd enact his bloody revenge on Bert and that hideous grey mutant. Oh how he'd tear them apart, both figuratively and literally. He'd savour every moment, enjoy it till the last drop fell to the floorboards and Smack-dab was no more.

Night had swooped in quickly, leaving Terrance alone and with minimal protection along the darkened Back Road to Smack-dab. After his insufferable defeat at the hands of the obnoxious, incompetent Phoenix, he had departed east, off the road, and wandered aimlessly into the Waste, considering suicide. To many it might seem an extreme measure, but Terrance was supposed to be a hero, a veteran adventurer who had saved the day more times than half the population of Can't Be Buried had even seen fucking days. But yet, everywhere he turned, not only did people not know who he was, they didn't care. They didn't care that the Sandcastle was gone, because another fort had sprung up in its place. They didn't care about how he quelled the riots on Bank Island, because Bank Island was just a place where mountains grew and sometimes people with money went - it didn't affect their daily lives. All of Terrance's stories were other people's problems, not theirs. And now, to top off years of misery and a complete lack of the fame he deserved, he had lost a battle to the most ridiculous bar in the entire Waste.

Bastards.

But as he staggered along the unkempt, winding trails that networked between the Back Road and the Highway, he came upon a young land seal bathing on a large, flat rock. It had glanced up at him, jet-black eyes searching him for signs of threat. Well, they had certainly found one, and after Terrance had disembowelled the blubberous, stumpy-legged creature for its fat, meat, and skin, an older land seal had sprung out of the nearby weeds and assailed him from behind.

The battle was long, vicious, and would have been a total embarrassment had anyone been watching. The land seal fought bravely, but clumsily, using its rows of sharp fangs and the bulbous fat claws of its square legs to slash and tear at Terrance's skin and clothing. But there's only so graceful a fat, inelegant creature once designed for aquatic combat can fight on land. Terrance, despite having lost a significant amount of blood and having only one hand, wrestled the beast to the floor and strangled the life out of it. And then as he sat, breathing hard, resting his head on its bloodied, pudgy rolls of fur and fat, it planted a seed in his brain.

A seed of revenge.

If a land seal, just a stupid Old World creature that got scared of some water, could muster up the courage to seek vengeance on those who would do its family wrong, Terrance could surely do the same to Smack-dab. Surely that was the hidden message in all of this? The sign that some Waste deity was trying to tell him. Well, whether it was a sign, luck, or just the complete unravelling of Terrance's sanity, he decided that the world was telling him to march back to Smack-dab and obliterate it. Wipe it completely from existence.

And so he had marched to Second Thought, purchased himself a new gun (one-handed, of course, but with an extended magazine and a scope, because he was still an adventurer and adventurers need big) and begun the trek back to the worst bar in Can't Be Buried.

Now it was night time, and he was climbing as best he could into the ruins of an Old World house. He had a small electric lantern dangling from his belt, casting a timid glow around most of his body to help him navigate the dangerous rubble and shards of the structure. Soon it revealed an empty, small space that may once have been a bedroom, a rotten chest of drawers still standing to one side, caving in on itself on one half. The drawers were long gone, though, so to be honest it was mostly just a chest of space.

Terrance kicked at the thing until it broke apart, giving him enough shrapnel to build a fire. He did so, but not without considerable effort on account of ... the problem. After some time, a small orange blaze danced to its own tune in the centre of the room, painting Terrance's face with a low-lit, dangerous shadow. He stared into it, face creasing with the deep wrinkles of anger, eyes blazing from the reflection of the flame.

And he did what all would do in his situation; a man plotting horrible murder whilst in equally horrible pain himself.

He brooded.

* * *

Keen-eyed Kiwi readers may have noticed that there's been a few New Zealand musical references so far in the book, with another one in this chapter. Did you catch them?

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