Cowboy Necromancer 2: Infinite Dark: (A Post-Apocalyptic LitRPG Fantasy), page 1
Infinite Dark
(Cowboy Necromancer Book Two)
By Harmon Cooper
Copyright © 2021 Harmon Cooper
Copyright © 2021 Boycott Books
Edited by Adam Luopa
Proofed by Andi Marlowe
Art by Daniel Kamarudin
Font by Shawn King
Audiobook produced by Podium Audio and narrated by Macleod Andrews
www.harmoncooper.com
writer.harmoncooper@gmail.com
Twitter: @_HarmonCooper
Harmon Cooper’s Patreon
All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Book One recap
Map of Sterling’s Journey
Part One
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
.Chapter Five.
.Chapter Six.
.Chapter Seven.
.Chapter Eight.
.Chapter Nine.
.Chapter Ten.
Part Two
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
.Chapter Five.
.Chapter Six.
Part Three
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
.Chapter Five.
.Chapter Six.
.Chapter Seven.
.Chapter Eight.
.Chapter Nine.
.Back of the Book.
.About the Author.
Book One recap
**Contains spoilers**
Five years ago, an event known as the Reset killed ninety percent of the world’s population, wiping the memory of anyone left alive. Alien monoliths known as Godwalkers appeared and took humankind off the electric grid. The population that was left were given stats, and were able to level up through combat. A select few were given enhanced mancer classes, allowing them to perform incredible feats.
Three years ago, Sterling Monedero and a band of superpowered mancers tried to do something about it.
They failed, ending in the deaths of a pyromancer named Liam and a hydromancer named Karina. Those still alive went their separate ways. Zephyr, an aeromancer, and the Sunflower Kid, a biomancer, headed to Albuquerque. Rowayton the Indestructible, also known as Roxie, headed to whereabouts unknown, and Sterling, the necromancer, moved to the outskirts of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, to retire and start a pepper farm.
Three years pass in relative peace until a group of bandits known as Killbillies show up to collect a chili tax from Sterling, the same time that a Godwalker appears in the sky and destroys his pepper farm. Deciding it’s time to get the old team together to deal with the alien monoliths once and for all, Sterling seeks out the mystical wisdom of a shaman named Don Gasper, which sends him to Las Cruces into the middle of a turf war between the Killbillies and the White Sands Militia. It isn’t an easy trip south, and along the way he ends up being taken prisoner by the Killbillies and crucified while their leader, a man named Commodore Bones, taunts him.
Sterling escapes and reaches Las Cruces. Through Don Gasper and a coyote, he learns that the Sunflower Kid is north. He also discovers that Roxie is being held by the militia, and is encouraged by Don Gasper to look for the Sunflower Kid first. Along his way, he encounters a group of Hopi natives who are protected by a solimancer named Paco. Paco points Sterling in the right direction of the Sunflower Kid, Sterling discovering that the Kid is being held captive by a cult known as the Culto Demente Sagrado. Due to a powerful telemancer, Sterling is unable to get close to the cult.
He heads even further north to find a man named Raylan, who is a flectomancer able to craft incredible items such as Sterling’s magical revolver, and his sickle-sword. Sterling learns that a bounty hunter named Ram is hunting him, but ignores the man as he makes it to Madrid, New Mexico, to meet Raylan. In Madrid, Sterling meets a female pyromancer named Sierra, and Raylan promises to craft some technology for him that will prevent the telemancer from affecting Sterling so he can rescue the Sunflower Kid.
Disaster strikes in the form of Ram the next morning, the bounty hunter using his control over ice to cut Sterling’s arm off. Raylan and Sierra are able to run Ram out of town, and after using his mancer power to graft a skeletal arm to his own, Sterling leaves as well. He rescues the Sunflower Kid, and in doing so ends up finding an enormous amalgamation, which is the word locals use to describe strange creatures that have appeared after the Reset, ones with skeletal heads. Sterling is once again assisted by Paco the solimancer, whom he promises to meet again in the future, perhaps letting him join their group.
Now heading south to meet Don Gasper, Sterling reconnects with the Sunflower Kid, and learns that Zephyr, one of his original teammates, is in Albuquerque. As much as he doesn’t want to go to the city, mostly because it is the site of gang warfare, he knows he needs to at some point. Throughout his trip, Sterling has been discovering information about his family, and while he doesn’t know if his wife and his child are still alive, he does have a lead in Albuquerque in the records at an old insurance company.
Reaching Alamogordo, Sterling reunites with Don Gasper, who has fallen under the spell of a female witch named Magdalena. Don Gasper and Magdalena, alongside the Sunflower Kid, convince Sterling to join forces with Commodore Bones to take on the White Sands Militia, so he can free Roxie from imprisonment. He has also heard that the militia is holding a technomancer, which he’ll need on his team if he ever wants to take down one of the Godwalkers.
As they assault the military base, freeing Roxie and a technomancer named Maron, a Godwalker suddenly appears in the sky. Deciding not to run this time, Sterling gets over his fear of heights as he flies into an opening on the Godwalker provided by Maron, where he is able to bring the towering alien monolith to the ground.
Upon waking after a series of explosions, Sterling finds Don Gasper in front of him, impaled on a spike and begging for forgiveness. Magdalena, Gasper’s lover, has betrayed him and is secretly a telemancer. She has escaped with Commodore Bones to Las Cruces alongside the technomancer. Now that he has the start of his team back together, Sterling decides to ride to Las Cruces first, to be followed by Albuquerque, and then later Utah, where the Godwalkers are rumored to have a terminal, which Raylan thinks is the key to bringing them down once and for all.
Map of Sterling’s Journey
Part One
The Bonneville Salt Flats, the Elder of Nauvoo, Beep, Slickrock Country, The Serpents of Paradise, Deseret
.Chapter One.
Middle of Nowhere, Deseret.
Not too distant future.
It was either heaven or hell, that, or an alien planet. Sterling Monedero couldn’t tell.
One minute he was set to begin the assault on Las Cruces, where he planned to rescue the technomancer named Maron from the clutches of Commodore Bones; the next he was standing on a hardened white surface filled with porcelain cracks that seemed to stretch for miles, a thick sandstorm whipping up around him, his vision obscured, everyone he had been with earlier gone, vanished.
Don Gasper, Roxie, the Sunflower Kid.
Gone.
It happened that fast.
“Shee-it,” Sterling said as he summoned his bag of tobacco and quickly rolled up a cigarette, an instinctual gesture, something he now did without thinking. Had he somehow been transported back to White Sands, New Mexico? Had he fallen and hit his head and this was the result? Was all of this some sort of twisted, hallucinatory vision triggered by some entheogenic plant that Don Gasper had slipped him? Could it have been caused by a telemancer, perhaps Magdalena, Don Gasper’s ex-lover?
Was this all simply an illusion?
He felt a spasm in his chest as panic set in, and gulped in a fresh breath of air to cool his nerves.
Seems real…
Sterling removed his black cowboy hat and located the device that Raylan the flectomancer had made to repel telepaths, which was tucked inside the brim. Probably wasn’t a telemancer, he thought as he placed his hat back on his head and conjured a lighter. Probably ain’t Heaven neither…
He placed his cigarette in his mouth and lit it, taking a deep drag off the cancer stick, hoping it would do something.
Is it a dream? Sterling willed himself to wake up. He even tried burning the tip of his cigarette into his other palm, which stung, but did little to jolt him out of a deep slumber.
“Where in the hell am I?”
It couldn’t be an alien planet unless they used oxygen similar to Earth, and it wasn’t hot enough to be Hell, at least Hell as Sterling had come to picture it based on the performative religious troupes traveling through Truth or Consequences, who had combined Biblical scenes with costumed drama, a traveling freak show if ever there was one. No fire, no brimstone, no blood-red sky, no bastard little devil trying to poke Sterling in the ass with his pitchfork. No nothing. Nope, there was absolutely nothing around to indicate where he was, and certainly no indication of how he had gotten there.
Sterling slowly lowered and knocked
“What in the hell?” he asked aloud after he brought a bit of the ground shavings up, noticing it was fine-grained. He put it to the tip of his tongue. Definitely salt. “Whole damn thing is salt,” he said, perplexed as he tried to see through the sand and salt that had started to pick up in the air again, whipping into mini cyclones all around him.
Sterling had seen real sandstorms back in T or C, so what he was witnessing was nothing new, yet there was enough wind to continue to conceal his surroundings, the cowboy necromancer once again feeling the tinge of panic in his chest.
He took a drag off his cigarette, not able to stop from shaking his head.
Don’t make no sense…
No Sunflower Kid, no Roxie, no Don Gasper. They’d all been together just minutes ago, and now Sterling was all alone, which was a bewildering experience, considering he had just been outside the Killbillies’ base, ready to infiltrate, to put a bullet between Commodore Bones’s eyes.
Bam!
If ever a man deserved to die, it was Commodore Bones.
“Damn peckerhead.” Sterling cursed himself once again for not killing the man when he’d had the chance. Instead, he had, under pressure from Don Gasper and the Sunflower Kid, joined up with Commodore Bones, taking part in the Killbilly leader’s mad pursuit against a bandit group out of El Paso known as the Texas Rangers.
Sterling should have gone with his gut back then, and he knew it. He should have seen the betrayal that was coming and acted preemptively, but he didn’t. Or better, he did see it coming and he ignored it, and now…
Now…
Sterling was just about to pull Manchester’s skeleton out of his inventory list and start riding in the direction that looked the most promising when something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention.
Always a quick draw, he had his magical revolver out by the time he turned to whatever it was he’d seen, confusion tracing across his face as he tried to make sense of the hovering object.
A baby Godwalker?
He aimed his weapon at it. The Godwalker was no larger than a kitchen trash can, its surfaces smooth obsidian, the miniature monolith bobbing left and right as it emitted a noise.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Each magical bullet cost him a mana point, but Sterling figured he’d give it everything he’d got if it meant not having to get vaporized by the tiny Godwalker. It beeped and he shot it again—Bam!—his magical bullet ricocheting off its smooth black surface.
The small Godwalker disappeared into the dust that bloomed into the air, Sterling listening for its beeps with his gun drawn.
“Come on out…” he said through gritted teeth.
The next sensation that met him wasn’t a sound, it was a rumbling beneath the heels of his black cowboy boots, the tremors vibrating up through his spine.
Sterling turned to his right, squinting now, his revolver ready to go, his other hand detaching his sickle-sword from its sheath, the cigarette still in his mouth half ash by this point.
“Damn… thing…” Sterling muttered, and turned again, the rumbling coming from a different direction now. Was the smaller Godwalker bringing a larger one? He tilted his gaze up, figuring the shadow of the monolithic alien craft would potentially reach him before the vessel did.
A hulking monstrosity tore out of the wall of powdery white salt and sand, Sterling barely managing to dive out of the way.
A gargantuan buffalo soared past him, a skull in place of its head, which Sterling instantly identified as belonging to some kind of mountain lion.
Body of a buffalo, skull of a mountain lion—an amalgamation.
Sterling began firing on the buffalo amalgamation indiscriminately, knowing full well what a beast of this size was capable of, especially one that was so bulky and powerful. The buffalo amalgamation turned on a dime and charged toward Sterling again. It didn’t have horns jutting out of its skull, but it did appear to have a pair of razor-sharp canines, each over nine inches long.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Sterling continued to unload bullets in its direction, cursing at the amalgamation, at his good-for-nothing luck, at his life since the Reset five years ago, at whoever had sent him to this godforsaken salt flat, and for good measure, at Commodore Bones as well, because Sterling needed someone to blame.
“You miserable old bucket of guts!” Sterling growled as the buffalo amalgamation snapped its teeth, ripping through the ends of his black duster as it passed him. “You done did it now! You son of a bitch!”
Sterling brazenly took off toward the buffalo this time, deciding to go on the offensive. There were a number of things he could have done, including fly, but he didn’t like heights, and the more the amalgamation toyed with him, the more heated he became.
“Send me out to the middle of nowhere, attack me… Not today! No sir, not today!”
He sidestepped its next attack like a matador and brought the curved end of his sickle-sword into the buffalo’s side, the blade with the turquoise energy radiating off its tip cutting a deep gash just over the amalgamation’s shoulder. No time to cuss, no time to see how much damage he’d done, Sterling swiveled around and began firing his revolver at the monstrosity indiscriminately, hoping to at least scare the beast away for a second, to give him a bit of space.
No such luck.
The amalgamation turned back toward him and managed to strike Sterling this time, the impact sending the cowboy necromancer flying back thirty feet.
He hit the hard salt flat, bounced up and rolled, losing his sickle-sword in the process, the wind knocked out of him as if he’d just taken a gut punch.
“Shee-it…” he mumbled, trying desperately to get back to his feet, the buffalo nearing him, hooves tearing into the cracked salt.
The impact was going to hurt, and while Sterling could likely heal from it, if it used its mountain lion head and chopped off his arm or leg, it was going to be difficult to find a replacement part.
He’d already been through that before back in Madrid, New Mexico, where there were more options for the cowboy necromancer via the graveyard outside of town. But here? About fifty miles to the north of no man’s land in a barren salt flat that made the underworld look inviting?
Fat chance.
“If I die…” Sterling said, psyching himself up, “I’m going to bring your ass with me!”
He aimed his revolver at the charging bison, ignoring the ground as it trembled beneath him, or the fear that had started to boil up in his chest. Sterling knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was about to be trampled, and was fine with it.
He was going to die, but he was damn sure going to do so fighting to the very end.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
BOOOOOOOmmm!
Blood, guts, entrails, viscera, bits of bone, torn ligaments, shards of teeth, burnt nerve endings, you name it, Sterling was covered in it in a matter of seconds. The muck stank to high heaven and it was sticky, but at least he was alive, and that was all that mattered.
He spat some of the mess out of his mouth and wiped it from his eyes, a scowl coming across his face as he looked up to see what had single-handedly destroyed the amalgamation.
“Damn you,” Sterling said as he pointed his revolver at the pint-size Godwalker floating in front of him. “Damn you to hell.”
Bam!
Once again, the bullet bounced off its sleek, chrome black surface.
The tiny Godwalker tilted a bit to the side, as if it were not only curious as to why Sterling kept shooting at it, but also somehow offended by it.
“I’ll shoot you again if you keep it up.”
“I heard you the first time,” Sterling said as he began to get out of his clothes. He had a spare set, and sending something to his inventory list always cleaned it up anyway. “Don’t know why you’re here, don’t know where I am, but…” He looked at the smoking carcass of the amalgamation. “I guess… I guess there ain’t no other way around it. You saved me.”
Sterling dropped his shirt to the ground. From there it was his belt, his boots, his pants, his underpants. “Turn around or something,” he told the Godwalker, Sterling at the point now that he didn’t care if he was undressing in front of it or not.
