Arcana 99: Stage One

Urho awoke from his uneasy slumber to the sound of an idling engine. He struggled to sit up, nearly knocking one of their rifles out of the open box in the Jeep's bed. The world around him was as dark as it had been when he fell asleep. Urho asked what time it was. The number "56" floated across the void before him; Johannes said it was noon.

Urho had gotten used to the darkness before dinner the other day. The only part he didn't like was feeling the Sun on his face without seeing it. The numbers, on the other hand, were still a work in progress.

How many people are in the car?

3

How many bullets do we have?

600

Hm, how many of them are duds?

19

Where are they?

At this, nineteen numbers appeared in the void before him. As Urho reached his arm towards one, it shrank. When it got to "10," his hand hit the lid of the crate. Urho swore and rubbed the pain out of his fingers.

"Where are we?" Urho asked. The numbers didn't provide an answer.

"A few miles from the Mexican border." Aksel's voice came from the left, he must be the one driving.

They were supposed to have crossed the border last night, "We're that far behind schedule?"

"You weren't able to drive your shift and Aksel and I needed rest. Don't worry about it though, it's only a few hours."

Urho sat in silence until he felt the Sun's heat leave him and the Jeep stop.

This must be the border crossing then.

As their vehicle idled and Aksel spoke to an unseen attendant, Urho could barely make out the sound of flapping fabric above them. A tent? The border shouldn't have a tent, and a flag would be too quiet. Urho asked himself where the border station was, and was answered with the number "18" to his left.

Urho tapped Johannes' shoulder, "Is this the border?"

"Yes," Johannes replied, "but we're in some special line for race participants."

"You, in the back." The voice of the man Aksel was speaking to addressed Urho, "Give me your name and application for the race."

Urho answered and followed the floating numbers until his hand fumbled the paper out of his pocket.

The man took it out of Urho's hands and went silent, "Your friend here, he's uhh, got a few more 'parts' in his ID photo. What happened?"

"A car accident last night. We already got him checked out at a hospital, no infection."

"Wow, a wreck and a hospital visit, and you're still the second team to cross the border. You must be something else."

"Second?"

"Yeah, two people came here yesterday morning. One of 'em had a horse. Not sure how they got it down here so quick, but their IDs checked out."

Nerio. . .

Before he could build up the courage to ask for their names, Urho felt the Jeep move again.

As he felt the Sun return to baking his skin, Urho realized the man had never checked the crate full of bullets next to Urho nor did he mention the open box with a machine gun behind him, "They just let us through? Even with our weapons?"

"That's what I asked him when you were talking with Johannes. He said that Grenfell and Maxwell paid a hefty sum to the government. All race participants are allowed free entry to the country. Weapons, drugs, anything short of bringing a known criminal is allowed through. Though, he took great pains to remind me that using those items would be just as illegal."

To bribe an entire government. . . How much did they spend?

10,000,000,000

In what though?

An hour, maybe more, passed before Aksel addressed Urho, "You said yesterday that you can see numbers or whatever, right?" Urho nodded, "Then can you tell me how many people are in the van behind us?"

Urho turned around, "Twelve. Why?"

"They've been following us since the border. Can you ask that thing if they want to kill us?"

"Nothing. only given me numbers so far, but. . ." Urho trailed off.

How many of them want to kill us?

12

Aksel took the news surprisingly well, "Shit." He told Urho to pass the machine gun to Johannes. Rather than waste time grabbing every item in the dark, Urho asked where the crate was and put it in the seat beside him. He heard Johannes rummage through it, clanging metal against metal interrupted by Johannes grunting and heaving as he brought parts to the front. He heard the squeak of the hand-drill followed by the click of the gun being attached to its mount on the Jeep's hood.

"Urho," Aksel began, "Get your head down, we're about to start shooting."

Urho began to bend forward as the Jeep spun around, forcing him to fall on his back. When his world stopped spinning, Urho heard the machine gun begin to fire. In the distance, he could barely make out the sound of shattering glass. A few seconds later, the gunfire stopped. Urho heard a bullet strike metal nearby. Then another, and another. A click and the rattling of a belt of ammunition in the front row entered his ears before the machine gun began its rain of deaf once more.

Between all the noise, Urho could barely make out Aksel shouting, "How many are left?"

12

That can't be right. They started with twelve, Johannes should have taken out at least half of them in the first barrage. How many of them did Johannes kill by now?

26

Urho gave Aksel the bad news as Johannes took another break to reload. Aksel swore and told Urho to start helping Johannes with the ammo. Urho felt the Jeep shake and footsteps recede into the cacophony of gunfire.

Where are they?

At this request, one dozen numbers appeared in the void before him. They each had values in the 110s. As time passed, Urho could see the numbers slowly move about before quickly moving down. The ones that fell only remained for a moment before vanishing with a new number appearing to take their place.

"The bodies. . . are they disappearing?"

Johannes shouted an affirmative and requested another belt. Urho fumbled for it in the dark. The numbers told him how far it was, but not what was on top of it. After digging through the invisible box, he pulled the belt out and bumped his hand into the back of Johannes' seat. He fought to get it around the seat a few seconds later.

I can't even pass things now. . .

Looking back to the dozen numbers before him, Urho readied his pistol and began to fire at them while Johannes finished reloading. He made it seven shots before Johannes noticed, "Urho! Stop! You're shooting a damn rock!"

When Urho asked for the location of anything between him and his targets, a trio of numbers appeared at various distances. Urho threw his pistol to the ground; he saw no point in even pretending to be able to wield it anymore. The number representing the men they've killed was in the fifties now, but the number of enemies remaining stayed at an even dozen. Urho struggled to pass another belt to Johannes That was the fourth one; they didn't have a fifth.

How can we stop these guys?

Urho looked for the numerical answer. There was nothing in the direction Johannes was firing, nothing towards where Aksel ran to, nothing in the crate behind him, and one "8" in the box beside him. Urho threw his hand into the box, pushing aside the cartridges and rations stored within until the number reached "0" as his hand clasped around a spherical object. By the heft, and the feeling of a metal ring slapping against his wrist, Urho knew it was a grenade. A new number appeared this time towards his enemies. By its faintly blue hue, Urho knew it denoted an angular measurement. He pulled back his arm and shifted until the number became null. Uncertain what, or who, he was aiming at; uncertain if his throwing arc was clear; Urho pulled the pin and threw it with all his might into the void.

Five seconds later, he heard an explosion followed by a barrage of returning gunfire. Urho ducked, hitting his head against the back of the seat. Meanwhile, he could hear Johannes swear as he ran out of ammunition before he too dived to the floor. As they hid from the attack, he saw that the number of assailants was changing. The floating "12" representing the people in the vehicle wanting to kill him shrank to 10, then 7, then 3, then 1. All the while, the dozen numbers representing the locations of the twelve people began to fall low and still. When the last number became motionless and the counter hit zero, the gunfire stopped.

A moment later, he heard Aksel's familiar voice shout above the silence, "That's the last of 'em!"

Urho felt the Jeep shake as Johannes got to his feet, "You sure? 'Cause they had a habit of not staying a corpse!"

Another gunshot sounded off, "I'm certain!" Aksel shouted.

Urho felt the Jeep move again as Aksel jumped in before starting them back on their way, "Thanks for the grenade, Johannes. They almost had me without your gun pinning them to the van, but after that explosion, they started scrambling for something that flew out of it. Gave me enough time to finish sneaking around the rocks to flank them."

"Thanks? But I didn't throw it." Johannes said.

A silence followed. Are they looking at me?

"I did throw it; exactly where the numbers said to."

"Really? Those numbers told you to hit that rock?"

"That's what I hit?"

"Dead on. A chunk of it flew right through the van, taking some crap with it."

Urho wanted to share a glance with Johannes but didn't know where to look. Johannes understood it regardless.

"What kind of 'crap'?" Johannes asked.

"I don't know, looked like a hood ornament. Why?"

Johannes continued his answers, "It was probably the artefact they were using to keep themselves alive."

"Huh?" Aksel's gasp demanded more explaination than either Urho or Johannes could give him.

Regardless, they tried, "Look like everyday stuff; have magic properties." Urho replied.

"Magic?" Aksel drew out both syllables of the word as if it would help illustrate how ludicrous the concept was before he remembered the day before. He stopped the Jeep, "You mean there's more shit like that van, and those monsters out there? And you two knew about them!?"

"Barely," Johannes tried to calm him, "Back in the war, we were paired up with a mercenary. He had items with similar magical properties, and we went on missions to take them from the enemy."

Aksel's mind immediately fell to the man they mentioned on the first day of the race. They had called him a mercenary, but Aksel knew the Finnish military didn't have the budget to hire any mercenaries, "That Nerio fellow?"

Urho could hear Johannes' shirt crease as he moved his head, "Yeah, but he never really told us any more than that."

"Well, that just excuses not telling me a damn thing when one of those 'items' attacked us yesterday don't it?"

"Aksel, I'd never encountered one like that; I didn't know what it could do. It-"

Aksel interrupted him, "Wouldn't have made a difference? No, I don't think it would have. Not in our fight against it anyway. But it would have gone a long way in telling me how much you saw me as a teammate versus seeing me as the third driver."

As they bickered, Urho thought back to the artefact their attackers were using. Where is it?

108

"And who even were those guys? Some of those 'enemies' you robbed during the war?"

"N-no! We only stole from the Russians, and they wouldn't track us all the way here to get a decades-old revenge. At least, I don't think so."

Urho carefully pulled his legs over the Jeep's door and slowly lowered himself to the ground.

100

"And how am I supposed to trust you!? Or am I supposed to accept a world where anyone has access to those things and they just so happen to target two people who already know about them?"

Urho stopped and moved around a large "3" that appeared when he asked where anything big enough to trip over was.

73

Their voices were fainter now, impossible to define beyond the "s"es and "t"es that always seemed to come out at the maximum volume.

42

They stopped shouting at each other as they noticed Urho had disappeared.

13

Urho moved his hand slowly, afraid of hitting something. It struck stone.

8

He put his other hand on the rock and pushed. It wasn't too heavy. Probably only twenty pounds.

0.78872

Seriously? Can this thing not answer in numbers I can measure?

The stone removed, Urho put his hand to the dirt and grasped a small, metallic object. He made his way back to the Jeep. For all the one hundred and eight whatevers, Urho felt the item in his hand. It was a long and thin tube with a pair of sticks in the middle. One end stopped with a sharp point, the other flattened and widened before ending. At the flat end, a minuscule strand of metal stuck out. I'm surprised this part didn't break off. What even is it? As Urho rubbed his hands over the protrusion, he felt a small fork at its end. Like a snake's tongue. Feeling it over again, Urho now visualized the snake's curved body with a pair of legs coming out of its center.

Legs?

Urho tried the two sticks again, they were short and "L" shaped. But surely they aren't feet. They must be the connectors for the hood.

When Urho had returned to the Jeep, Aksel helped him in and he gave Johannes the statue.

"The numbers said that's the artefact. Is it Aksel?" Urho stated as he sat back on the rear bench.

"Yeah, I think so. I didn't pay much attention to it before it flew off, and I only saw a second of that."

"What does it look like?"

"Why don-" Aksel's voice trailed off before he muttered a "right" and continued without acknowledging what he had done, "It's a hood ornament, plain metal in the shape of a human. It's got wings on the back."

"An angel," Johannes added.

"Probably, I can barely make out a halo above its head, but its clothes are obscured by the wings draped around it. Like a cloak."

"What? Let me see."

Johannes handed it to him. As Urho held it, he felt the same cold metal as before. It had the same heft and the same texture. But it was a different shape. It was tall, wide, and conical. Wrapping his fingers around it, he could feel a hole in the front where the figure's wings left a slim opening. It was only large enough for his finger to feel it, however, leaving the statue's body completely hidden behind the veil. It took up the same dimensions in his hand, putting more mass within the space. Despite this, it felt no heavier.

That can't be right. It has nearly twice as much material as it did before, but it feels the same. . . Was I misinterpreting it?

He felt the tiny halo atop the figure's head. It was undoubtedly a ring. Maybe I thought that was the head? I can barely feel the hole in it now. . .

He moved on to the wings. They're curved like I felt before. . . Did I misjudge the scale?

At the bottom of the statue, below its winged cloak, was a pair of "L" shaped extrusions. The feet. . . they didn't change at all.

Urho pondered a moment. He had undoubtedly handed what he felt was a long tube to Johannes, yet Johannes gave him back a cone. If it had changed, it would have done so in Johannes' hands. He would have felt something*,* or Aksel would have seen it. I must have been holding it at an odd angle then. Urho concluded.

As Urho prodded and studied the item in his hand, Aksel began to drive the Jeep once more towards the city of Chihuahua. While Urho was overcome with curiosity at the artefact and what Nerio could tell him about it, Aksel thought of the past days' events. Being attacked by the monster was the most harrowing battle Aksel had been in. To throw in a bout with a second pair of—as he put it—magic fucks in as many days was unbearable. He wanted a trip around the world with an old friend. He wanted to see the world beyond his home if even for a second. Instead, he found himself in another war. A war he, thankfully, could leave.