Nothing mattered to Jackmaw Yapyap. He was a man who walked through life like a child running through a flowerbed. This world had no beauty or comfort to offer him, and as such, he had spent his life crushing whatever solace the people of the wasteland held onto. Friends, family, homes, hopes and dreams, they all burned before Jackmaw Yapyap.

  Indeed, nothing mattered to him. Nothing but this boy. There was something to be said about the legacy of kings, but one day even his bones would become bleached by the sun. If he was to conquer the entire valley, who would remain at the top when he finally bit that bullet?

  It couldn’t be any of his strung-out raiders. Many would offer themselves up to him as potential apprentices, their sights set on being his princeling when he was officially crowned king of all creation. That wasn’t what he was looking for.

  He wasn’t looking for ambition or greed. There was plenty of that shit among the raider clans of the valley. No, what Krav offered was something else entirely. When Jackmaw saw him in Agua Fria, something itched in the back of his head. That defiance, that strength of will, spoke to him louder than any words Shi-Toh ever offered. When the boy deflected his burner with a scrap metal axe, he got chills.

  Even in the apocalypse, one hundred years after the destruction of Footfall and every city like it, the human soul could recognize the archetypes. Jackmaw Yapyap, the wealth hording dragon, and Krav, the brave young knight who stood up to him. That was real destiny, the real fate Jackmaw had been searching for.

  His early years had been spent with a head full of garbage like that. He had never been fond of mysticism, and the performative nature of the women of his tribe made him sick. There was a reality out there that didn’t believe in such nonsense, and he thought he was a part of it. It wasn’t until Krav that his spiritual upbringing made any sense at all.

  Now they squared up to each other, and Jackmaw could feel it in his chest like a swarm of locust were buzzing in his lungs. This was what his mother had told him about, what she was trying to pound into his thick skull.

  Destiny is real, and we only know that when we feel it in the rhythm of the earth. It’s in the small moments when a leaf eventually falls from a tree or an insect sheds its old skin. It’s in the large moments when a mother first holds her child and a man takes his first life. It’s the circle of life, the pulse of the world soul, the place where paths converge.

  Jackmaw Yapyap had finally crossed paths with someone. He had met people in his life that tested his strength and matched his constitution, but none had ever stood in his way like Krav had. It was na?ve of the warlord to believe that they could walk that path together.

  Seldom do conquerors ever walk side by side with each other.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” one of them said.

  “So have I,” the other responded.

  Both of their hearts beat in sync with each other. There was a shared excitement for the battle to come. Jackmaw sweat for the chance to see his princeling use his axe, and Krav twitched looking at the soft meat in the warlord’s neck.

  “Where’s Lenny?” Krav asked. There was calm in his voice, as if he didn’t actually care where Lenny was. It was as nonchalant as if he had asked Jackmaw how his weekend was.

  “He’s safe. I took good care of him for you, I think.”

  Krav didn’t know why, but his lips twitched and he fought to keep from smiling. He took a step forward and pulled the axe from his belt. Jackmaw was giddy to see he still had it.

  The boy also pulled the skull from his hip and presented it to the warlord. Krav had kept sober in order to prevent the head from talking to him. He knew Rufus wouldn’t approve of this encounter. “Do you know who this is?”

  The black eyes were all Jackmaw needed to see. “Yes. Your master.”

  “The one you killed.” Again, Krav fought his smile. This time a howl of laughter was bubbling in his throat. It was the same nervous laughter you might get on a first date or before giving an extravagant acceptance speech. “How did you do it?”

  “I ripped his head off when he lied and said the Emerald Expanse didn’t exist. We both know that’s untrue now, don’t we?”

  The boy nodded. That was the answer he expected. For some reason, when he stood this close to the man he dreamt of killing for months now, he felt a sense of accomplishment. The journey wasn’t over, but it would be soon.

  “I have to kill you now.”

  “You can try. There’s always room for you in the clan. You as my princeling and your brother as my consul. With that kind of power, we can have the whole world at our feet.”

  “I don’t want the world. I want…” he was going to say he wanted his brother back, but he could feel another sentence forming on his tongue. He didn’t want Lenny, he wanted Jackmaw’s head. That was just the growths behind his eyes talking, he told himself. “I want Lenny to be safe.”

  “And where would he be safer than at the side of the most dangerous man in the wasteland?”

  “Once I cut your head off, you’ll just be another bite to eat for the vultures you like so much.”

  Jackmaw smiled at that. “And then you’ll take my spot as king of the world. All roads lead to me, Krav. On this day, you’ll either be mine to mold into greatness, or you’ll surpass me. You don’t get to leave Footfall without facing your destiny.”

  Krav raised his axe and pointed it at Jackmaw Yapyap. “I don’t need to be king of shit. I just need to kill you.”

  “We’ll see about that!” Jackmaw grinned and sharpened his blades against each other. “Show me, princeling! Show me what kind of man the wasteland forged!”

  They charged each other and collided. In a sober state, Krav was more measured with his attacks. His strikes were aimed for more strategic targets like Jackmaw’s legs and kidneys. The warlord deflected each attack with ease. Without the drugs, Krav was just another raider with a rusty axe.

  “Come on! Better than that!”

  Jackmaw punched Krav hard in the head with the pommel of his blade. It opened a gash on the boy’s forehead and sent him stumbling backwards. Krav wiped blood from his eyes and continued to slash.

  “You’re my destiny, Krav! Show me! Be my death or be the prince of the world!”

  “Shut the hell up!”

  Nothing was working. The boy’s strikes were calculated, but Jackmaw was one step ahead of him. Decades in the wasteland had sharpened the warlord’s senses, and he had killed many a sober man. It was too predictable to fight a sober man. Too much thought in their strikes, too much information in their eyes.

  In a single motion, Jackmaw ended the fight. He completely outclassed the boy. As his axe came close, the warlord caught it with his knives and ripped it from his hands. The axe clattered to the floor and a kick forced Krav to his knees. As soon as the boy looked up, both knives met his neck.

  They were poised in a scissor position. One wrong move and he’d lose his head. Jackmaw stooped so low, the boy could feel his hot breath on his skin like a dragon readying to breathe fire.

  “Tell me something. Did you and your master ever discuss the meaning of life?”

  Krav’s nostrils flared with frustration. Maybe he wouldn’t get to cut off Jackmaw’s head, but he wouldn’t submit to him either. “There is no meaning to life, scab head.”

  Jackmaw laughed at that. No one in the valley had the balls to call him a scab head. “In all my time wandering the wasteland, killing and stealing for everything I’ve ever owned, there’s always been something I’ve believed. The meaning of life is to move forward. Those who become stagnant die in the same spot they stand for their whole lives. What’s the point in that? You understand. You have to understand after everything you’ve been through.”

  To move forward. To walk the path you’ve chosen. To conquer. Krav hated to admit it, but he agreed. Change, evolution even, was what had brought him between the blades of Jackmaw. The people he had met who strove to continue ever onward had been the strongest. It was the ones that stayed in their settlements, the ones he had never even bothered to learn the names of, that were worse off for it.

  If it was true of anywhere, it was true for Kiva Noon. Greenblatt had left and become more than just a warlord, but those who stayed were doomed to be destroyed first by the Bone Eaters, then the Gordo clan.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Maybe the same could be said about Ulrich as well. His experience in the wasteland had made him more formidable than his kin. Krav could recall how much more he liked the fat bastard than the posh and spoiled Executioners. They were doomed to fall to their own greed while Ulrich pushed on into the wastes.

  Even… even Mac. She had never wanted to leave the Gordo clan. The comfort of having a community to surround her was too much to ever leave behind. It was fate that she met Krav and went on this journey with him, but he could tell that she had changed for the better because of it.

  Maybe Jackmaw was right. The meaning of life was conquest. To better oneself and crush the weaker chaff beneath you was the only way to grab the threads of fate and steer them in the direction you wanted. But Krav didn’t want any of that. He didn’t want to conquer the valley. He just wanted…

  The air above them exploded and bathed their battlefield in a green fog. It mixed with the burning air of Footfall to create a hazy gas that drifted down to Krav and Jackmaw. The warlord looked up long enough for Krav to kick him in the leg and roll out from between the blades.

  That terrible fog. Another explosion overhead seemed to press the cloud down further towards the earth as another bloomed above it. Krav watched them erupt all over Footfall. Jackmaw snarled at them.

  “What the hell is this?” the warlord said. He zipped up his gimp mask to try and keep from breathing it in.

  Krav made his move while Jackmaw was distracted. He charged him with the axe aimed straight for the back of his neck. The cloud of smoke blanketed them before he could make contact, and when Jackmaw turned, he blocked the axe with his blade. The clash between them sent the world spiraling.

  Whatever was in that cloud felt familiar and alien. Krav inhaled it with ripped lungs, and it tasted like a menthol cigarette. The cool chill clung to the back of his throat and made his chest feel light. But there was something else in there. The green smoke was alight with a glitter Krav had seen before, had tasted before.

  Behind Jackmaw, Krav could already see the shambling green ghosts that were typical of a DMD high. Endless ranks of the dead wandered the streets of Footfall. At one point, Krav figured it must have been the most populated place in the entire valley based on the amount lost souls alone.

  The ghosts shivered and wandered aimlessly. They circled Krav and Jackmaw like eternal spectators watching the battle of archetypes.

  As for the two combatants, they were driven insane with the gas. The zerker made their blood pump like high octane fuel. The DMD shot their perception and shredded their brain. Krav had been impressed by Shi-Toh’s high, the one that made him a zombie. This was similar, but it turned him into a feral animal.

  Mac watched through a scope as she held her bound wounds. They were just… standing there. Jackmaw and Krav had traded a few blows, the warlord keeping up his defenses as the boy wore himself down, but now they just watched each other.

  Judging by the screams and manic gunfire throughout the town, her mixture had worked. So then why didn’t they move?

  “Come on Krav,” she said. Pronouncing the V in his name vibrated her split lip and sent fresh pain rolling through her face, but her attention was focused solely on the battle in her scope. “Kick his ass.”

  Finally, Jackmaw made the first move.

  The twin suns bared witness to the battle. Through their burning green eyes, they watched the two fight like dueling gods. The fate of their protectorate was dependent on the outcome of a pair of fools.

  They were two snakes wriggling in the sand. They were dueling blades in the hands of inexperienced swordsmen. They were the jaws of the world wolf. They were soaring eagles and solitary spiders.

  It was hard to tell just what they were while under the effects of what the wasteland would eventually know as Ramrod. The drug seemed to sink deeper beyond just its user’s brain. It soaked into their very soul like fresh rain on needy soil.

  The ones with low willpower had sipped from a chalice of insanity and were running wild with rage. They shot the wandering ghosts and clawed at anything living. Those with some constitution were frightened by the spirits, but they had enough sense to hide out for the remainder of the high.

  Jackmaw Yapyap and Kav looked to be the only two with enough strength to overpower it. They didn’t concern themselves with madness. Krav had the growths behind his eyes pointing the orbs wherever they demanded. Jackmaw finally had his obsession within reach. Neither would let a parade of ghosts pull them away from their destinies.

  The warlord rushed the boy with a fist raised. In his mind he was a roiling tempest, all wind and rain. The fist came down and bashed the boy in the face. He rolled and sputtered on the floor, then pushed himself up.

  Krav swung his axe. The boy was disease and fever. When he attacked, he saw Jackmaw like a monstrous shade. The weapon met flesh, but it was hard to tell where it separated the shadow’s skin.

  Trading blows, they seemed to move too fast and too slow. Krav saw Jackmaw’s form ungulate as it shifted and spasmed. He was a shade, then a demon, then a spider with powerful limbs. The axe passed through heads that didn’t exist and cut flesh that was made of earth.

  Jackmaw fared similarly. He saw the boy when he attacked, but when Krav fought back, he saw him as the terrible mega vulture. Hesitation seized his muscles, and he allowed the bird to bite him. It felt more like an axe than a beak.

  This wouldn’t work for Jackmaw. He was used to getting high and still being a killing machine, but this concoction was too much. It rotted his already unstable mind. He was seeing things that he knew weren’t really there, but they were so palpable to him they actually made themselves a reality. He could smell the feathers when the boy became a mega vulture. He could taste the plague when he turned into that too. Jackmaw knew he was just a boy, but right now he seemed like a demigod.

  There was only one way to ensure destiny now. His prize was stolen from him, but vanity was nothing compared to vindication. He attacked the boy with everything he had. One would die, one would live, and his mother’s talk of mysticism would prove itself one way or another.

  Jackmaw’s large knives carved through nothing. He was swinging them at the bird’s wings fruitlessly. Switching to the head didn’t fare any better. The bite still came as his own attacks went through it. He aimed for the body.

  Krav saw him as a horned demon on fire. Jackmaw’s blades became a pair of twin sickles that flashed with a passionate flame. They were coming at him like charging bulls; all power and no strategy. Colliding his axe with them made sparks that burst like fireworks.

  It was hard to tell who was winning. In both of their minds, they were raging against monsters, and yet, were somehow the monsters themselves. Though neither would admit it, there was a real fear in their hearts that what they were looking at was the true soul of their opponent.

  Krav could hear Rufus at his hip, but there was no way to allow him to interrupt. The old man didn’t know what this fight meant to him, and he couldn’t be stopped. Not now.

  Not until Jackmaw hit him hard in the gut with a knife.

  His whole world surged. The battlefield flashed back and forth between the true sight of Footfall, the haze of it through the DMD, and something else. Krav stood on a path, his path, and walked through a sandstorm.

  Jackmaw was gone. Footfall was gone. It was only Krav now, and he was afraid of what that meant.

  Whenever he tried to focus on anything, it disappeared. A memory played just off the path, one of him and Lenny playing in a small pond of brown water. It faded as he got close. It continued on like that, taunting him with memories of better times.

  Rufus’s headless corpse stood on one side of the path. It was turned toward Krav, and though it had no head, Krav could tell it was watching him. Luckily, the corpse didn’t fade when he drew near.

  “Man… was I really that skinny?” Rufus asked from Krav’s hip. The boy unclipped it and held it up like a lantern to his face.

  “What’s happening, Rufus?”

  “I think you’re dead. You’ve been here before though. Just keep walking down the path.”

  “I don’t want to,” Krav said. He turned and tried to leave the headless corpse behind, but a few yards down the path, he saw it again. “Fuck.”

  “Mhm,” Rufus agreed. “You don’t often get a choice. I guess third times the charm.”

  “I can’t die. I still have to save Lenny.”

  “You already did. The Gordo clan lost at this point. Your friends have all the opportunity in the world to pick them off, given the state they’re in. Rest now, Krav. You earned it.”

  The boy stood for a long while staring at the headless corpse. “What happens if I keep walking down the path?”

  “Eventually, you’ll find out what Karma has planned for you beyond the veil of the soul. Maybe you’ll be reincarnated. Maybe the Karmic hells await you.”

  “What about heaven? You think that’s an option?”

  Rufus hesitated and chose his words carefully. “Heaven is always an option to some. Karma works in mysterious ways. We can go find out together.”

  The headless corpse stepped onto the path and offered Krav one of its knotted hands. The boy took it, unaware of how much he had missed the graceful touch of his master. The corpse dragged him onward, and he looked over his shoulder one last time.

  “Do you think you’ll be with me, wherever we go?”

  “We all walk our own paths, but I’m a spirit guide. I’ve walked many paths with wayward souls. You’ve always been one of my sheep, Krav. I will guide you too.”

  That was comforting. The pain of leaving Lenny behind was dampened for the time being. It would have to be enough to get him to the barrier of souls, to finally cross over to the other side. Maybe if he was lucky, Lenny would get his skull and they could go on adventures together even after he died.

  Rufus led him down the path until they reached a door. Dark wood and metal bands made it look medieval. There was a peephole at the top of it, as if Krav could look through it and decide to try a different fate.

  “Here we are,” Rufus said. His headless corpse released Krav’s hand and stood near the door in silence. “The door of destiny.”

  “That’s where I’ll go… once I accept my death?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry it had to end like this, Krav. But I’m so glad I was able to share these years of our lives together. Go ahead and be at peace. You’ve earned it.”

  Krav stood on his tip-toes to see through the peephole. He wasn’t looking at the hell Karma had picked out for him, instead, he saw through his own dying eyes. They were sober now, and they saw the maniac smile of Jackmaw Yapyap as he bled him dry.

  “I didn’t get to cut his head off,” he snarled.

  “No point. Fate demands you return to the land of souls, and we don’t argue with fate.”

  There was a creaking noise as the boy grinded his teeth together. “Jackmaw Yapyap makes fate his bitch.”

  “And you are not him.”

  “But I’m not you either, Rufus. I’m not just a soul walking a path. I set out with the goal of saving Lenny and cutting off that freak’s head.”

  “You achieved that.”

  Krav shook his head and handed Rufus back his. “No. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t mount his head on a spike!”

  Something heavy weighed at Krav’s waist. When his fingers reached it, he found the axe had made the journey with him. There was only one way through a door like this. Opening it would seal his fate, but smashing it to splinters would open the way. His way.

  “You don’t need to do that! Hey!”

  Rufus didn’t do much but protest his escape. Krav hit the door and splinters flared away from it. From the new hole he had made, he could smell the cold tang of the gas cloud that had intoxicated the battlefield. He snatched the head back from Rufus’s corpse.

  “You want to walk my path with me Rufus! Then we keep walking! We don’t stop just because fate wants us to! Fuck this destiny! I’m getting my brother back!”

  “You foolish boy!”

  “I’m only coming back here with two heads on my belt!”

  The axe tore away at the door until its hinges popped and its wood was kindling. Krav kicked aside the remaining wood and stepped back into the land of the living, uninvited.