The creature in the doorway is unmistakably a possum, complete with the long tail and triangular snout of its kind, but this one walks upright and wields a rifle. It shows no concern at several smaller bodies on the floor, but locks on another creature in the deeper darkness. The possum raises the rifle and loads a round, but eases when it sees that the watcher looking back has only one arm, chained behind its back. It barks a command, and tenses again at the returning stare. It fires almost instinctively, but the figure has already dived to one side. There is a double click, and the possum briefly gapes at the sight of a lever-action rifle gripped in the two dexterous feet of the first specimen of Archididelphis invicta to appear in a hundred years.
No-Hands stirred and shook his head. Blood loss and dehydration had again pushed him to the brink of catatonia, one of the few qualities he shared with his ancestors. He scrambled upright and loped up the narrow path ahead of him, hobbling on a sawed off shotgun where his right leg had been. He looked about for any hint of food or water, and narrowed his gaze on a thorny vine. He recognized it as a plant known for storing water in its roots, and immediately began to tug and claw with his hand and hook. Only then did he pause to peer at a lesser vine wrapped around the first. He jumped aside just before the tripwire sent a boulder crashing down from above.
A short time later, he reached an opening that on his scale qualified as a low cave. He drew his broomhandle pistol as he approached the entrance. When no danger presented itself, he stepped inside. A moment later, his roar echoed from the cave. A moment after that, he landed on his back at the cave mouth with a large snake biting furiously at his improvised leg. The pistol went clattering away, to drop over the edge of the narrow path. It would have fallen a hundred meters and more, but before it had gone a quarter of the way, a hand shot out and caught it. There was a brief sniffing, then the gun was hurled with such force that it shattered against the far wall of the passage.
No-Hands swung himself up onto a ledge where the upward path met another that descended from above. He dropped behind a rock that offered marginal cover, then he drew his second broomhandle, the long-barreled carbine. A holster was hastily affixed as a stock, followed by a scope. He took aim downhill, where the path behind him made a sharp turn in an ideal and almost unavoidable ambush. “Almost,” he said alone. He turned his gaze and his aim upward. He fired twice at a dark shape peering from behind a rock near the top of the path above. Almost simultaneously, a crossbow bolt tore a notch in his saucer-like left ear. He fired three more times, and the figure retreated, not before pushing the rock downhill. No-Hands vaulted on top of the rock that was his own cover, and jumped just high enough to catch hold of a vine with his hook. Beneath him, the rolling rock struck the stationary one, smashing both to bits.
The muzzle of the carbine poked into view over the edge of the cliff well before its owner, turned sideways. A spray of bullets erupted in full automatic, chewing a trail left to right. When the weapon clicked empty, No-Hands clambered up. Before him, the top of the plateau stretched out, even more barren than the landscape below. The only relief was a series of ruins, little more than piled rubble except for an intact façade of what had clearly been the largest structure. It reared far overhead, much too high not to be the work of a far larger race, up to a peaked top that still bore the shape of a cross.
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