Gunsoul

They reached the Ammobog by dawn.

As Bucket promised, the bog grew inside a small, sunken valley west of Fleshmarket. The spirit-train stopped on the buried remnants of a ruined station whose elevated position spared it from the dead white sea’s expansion. Yuan only had to look out the window to take a look at their destination below.

The area was everything Bucket promised: a ten-kilometers wide marsh of smoke and metal. Lead-soaked soil housed sprouting casings that bloomed into bullets under the shadow of hollow iron trees with barrels for branches. Streams of liquid gunpowder winded between the barrel trees, their surfaces gleaming with flecks of metal, and the slightest spark would ignite them into a fiery detonation. Yuan could smell their acridness from here.

A thick fog of gunsmoke hung over the area, so Yuan couldn’t see its center clearly. The frontiers were clearly demarcated though. The Ammobog formed a perfect circle surrounded by both rocks and the dead white sea, and the frontier was too sharp to be natural.

Yuan had never seen an Authority, but closing his eyes and focusing on the land’s qi told him much. The Ammobog radiated power like a furnace, to the point Yuan couldn’t sense anything inside it. It was like standing next to an iron sun. If living creatures existed inside it, he couldn’t detect them.

Metal, Yuan guessed. Revolver’s aura radiated fire, but this place had another elemental affinity. Same as mine.

Observing Revolver’s qi already floored Yuan in the past, but whoever created the Ammobog was in a different league entirely. It was almost oppressive. The absence of any Sect outposts worried him too. Many cultivators wouldn’t think twice about sending Scraps into death’s jaws to forage for resources. The Ammobog wasn’t too far from Fleshmarket, so it should be easy to organize harvest runs.

If neither the Metallists nor the Flesh Mansion Sect bothered with this place, then it was probably more trouble than it was worth.

“That’s the Ammobog all right, sir!” Bucket said with enthusiasm. He and his fellow Gun cultists were already unloading crates to stuff bullets in. “We’ll just have to bend over to reap the ammo harvest!”

“If it was so easy, more people would frequent this place,” Yuan replied gruffly. “You said the Gunsoul’s ‘ghost’ attacks intruders? How?”

“Mostly she just shoots visitors,” Bucket explained, almost cheerfully. “Sometimes she doesn’t, but her voice warns you to turn back before she changes her mind.”

Enlightening. Yuan glanced at Orient and Holster, both of whom stared at the Ammobog in equal uneasiness. Unlike Bucket’s band, they could sense the oppressive power radiating from this cursed land.

“There is still time to turn back, Honored Guest Yuan,” Orient warned him.

“It would bother me to leave empty-handed,” Yuan confessed. “What are our other options?”

“We could continue westward to Battletown,” Orient suggested. “However, this Authority clogs the main leyline to sustain itself. It would force me to take a large detour to bypass it.”

“I’m not ready to confront Slash yet.” Yuan would have preferred to get his hands on a pill and cross the Third Coil first. “And I’ll have to pick a side if we return to Fleshmarket.”

“Fear not, sir!” Bucket encouraged him. “I’m sure the ghost of Ammobog will welcome a fellow Gunsoul with open firearms!”

At least one of them showed enthusiasm. Yuan sensed Holster tugging at his pants in an attempt to grab his attention. His charge pointed at the Ammobog.

“Wait, do you want me to go there?” Yuan asked. His scowl only deepened when Holster nodded back, albeit hesitantly. “Did you sense anything?”

Holster bit her lower lips, then looked at Orient.

“Sorrow,” the caretaker translated. “Miss Holster says her soul is broken.”

“Her? The Gunsoul?” Yuan raised an eyebrow. “Broken how?”

Holster made a series of mudra signs, half of which Yuan did not recognize. “Egg?” he said, trying to translate the symbols. “A cracked cosmic egg?”

“A cracked core,” Orient translated. “Miss Holster believes that this Gunsoul’s core is broken somehow.”

A broken core? Was that even possible? The only way Yuan knew to lose one was to either break an Unspeakable Oath or undergo a Human Pillar procedure, both of which prevented the user from using techniques at all; let alone an Authority.

Yuan decided to investigate after a moment’s consideration. The Ammobog was certainly dangerous, but he was curious about its creator. Learning what happened to her may give him more insight into his own condition.

“I'll go with Bucket and the others,” he told Orient and Holster. “The two of you stay here. If we haven’t returned by sunset…” Yuan marked a short pause. “Leave for a safer place.”

While Holster paled in concern, Orient proved far less sentimental. “Understood,” she replied with professionalism. “I shall take care of Miss Holster should the worst come to pass.”

“I swear I’ll be back shortly,” Yuan promised Holster. She seemed to hesitate to follow him for a brief instant until he patted her on the shoulder. “Be a good girl and keep your iron close, understand?”

Holster bit her lip before nodding obediently. Leaving in Orient's care, Yuan escorted Bucket and the others down a trail and closer to the Ammobog. He took both the Saint Heckler and Kalash Angel with him, keeping the former holstered at his side and the latter strapped to his back with a leather belt.

Yuan would have loved to test these weapons and check how his Gunsoul powers synergized with them, but alas, the ammo shortage would make it a waste of good bullets for the time being. The Kalash only had thirty rounds in its magazine and the Saint Heckler forty. Each shot counted.

“He’s the Gun, dark and dire; quick to anger, indiscriminate fire!” Bucket sang to himself. “In his sight, everyone's the same; at the barrel’s end, each life a fleeting frame!”

Soon the cultists joined him in some sort of Gun-worshiping folk song. Yuan ignored them and continued to walk in utter silence.

“A soul for a bullet, his immortal fame; the Gun will never die, his boastful claim!” sang the bullet brothers. “He'll dance the lead dance, till no one can pull the trigger! Leaving ruins and whispers, his hopes ever grimmer!”

If the spirit-train’s arrival didn’t alert the local Gunsoul of their presence, their off-key singing probably did the trick.

The group soon reached the frontier of the Ammobog. White flowers bloomed on one side of a curved line, and bullet seeds grew in lead-rich soil on the other. Yuan scanned the area in search of the Gunsoul ‘ghost.’ He couldn’t see much through the gunsmoke fog and the barrel trees.

“Is someone there?!” Yuan called out to the marsh. “I am Yuan Guang, a Gunsoul like you! I’ve come to talk!”

Only the sound of the wind whistling through the barrel-trees answered him, its song resembling the echo of gunfire. The group waited a moment before Yuan cautiously stepped through the Ammobog’s frontier. He expected a shift across reality, like the kind he experienced when crossing into the Thunderlands.

Entering the Ammobog proved a very different experience. Yuan sensed a veil separating it from the rest of the world, but it was weak, diffuse, disorganized. It felt like entering a pocket of hot air, noticeable yet far from disorienting. Whatever force maintained the front between this Authority and the rest of the universe failed to properly secure its border.

However, Yuan immediately detected a diffuse, feminine presence around him. The Thunderlands had been chaos incarnate, a boiling cauldron of qi and sorcery without reason or purpose. The rad-hag was born to serve as its incarnation rather than its ruler. The Ammobog was the complete opposite: a single will controlled every inch of its territory, holding claim to its land and air. This was a place of order, and the cultivator controlling it immediately detected any intruder that did not belong here.

Yuan’s grip on his submachine gun tightened. He waited either for an attack or an invitation, receiving neither.

The cultists behind him exchanged glances.

“May the faithful step forward!” Bucket shouted. He walked towards the frontier, only for another cultist to quickly beat him to it in an attempt to prove his dedication.

A bullet struck the man in the forehead, blowing his brains out and killing him the second he crossed the frontier.

The cultists let out shouts of surprise, but Yuan had already drawn his submachine gun before the cultist’s corpse hit the ground.

“Behind me!” He ordered the others, but Bucket disobeyed him. The man attempted to grab his fellow worshiper’s body and drag him out of the Ammobog, only to suffer a headshot of his own the moment he crossed the veil between worlds. The round hit his helmet with such strength that it propelled Bucket backward into a bed of white flowers.

Yuan aimed at the attack’s source and saw nothing beyond the thick gray fog. He immediately retreated outside the veil and quickly checked the wounded. To his surprise, Bucket quickly rose back up. His sturdy helmet had blocked the round right above the eyeholes, saving his life.

“Praise the Gun, bullet-brother!” Bucket prayed with his arms wide open. Yuan had never seen someone so happy to be shot in the head. “I have been spared once more!”

Good for him, Yuan thought grimly after checking the other cultist. Unlike Bucket, that one had lost a third of his skull and brain matter. Somehow, I don’t think he’ll rise up as a Gunsoul.

“Sniper rounds,” Yuan noted after checking the ammunition and the corpse’s head wound. Which meant the shooter could have struck from a mile away. That or it could have been one of the trees. Yuan knew better than to expect logic from the physical representation of someone’s soul. “Those were warning shots.”

He had seen Revolver blow up dunes by charging his bullets with qi. A stronger cultivator could have decimated the entire group with a single round had they decided to. Moreover, only the cultists were shot at.

Yuan cautiously stepped over the veil once more to test his theory. No sniper struck him this time either.

He alone was invited.

She’ll only let me pass. Yuan leaned on and picked a bullet seed from the ground. He immediately recognized the smooth shape of a .22LR cartridge. He tossed it outside the Ammobog and received no punishment for it. She won’t stop me from harvesting ammo either.

“Bless our lost brother!” Bucket prayed over his fellow cultist’s corpse. “His soul shall feast in the shooting grounds of Bullet Hell!”

Yuan considered his options. Bucket had guessed correctly: he could easily complete his job by picking up rounds like a farmer with his crops and then handing them over to the cultists. The local Gunsoul seemed to suffer his presence on her territory.

Nonetheless, it would be quite improper to forage on someone’s lands without paying them homage. The Gunsoul’s tolerance might only extend so far.

“Give him the last rites sutra and return to the spirit-train,” Yuan ordered Bucket and the others as he moved the dead cultist body over to them. “I’ll talk to her alone.”