Cowboy necromancer 5 dev.., p.1
Cowboy Necromancer 5: Devil's Garden Novella, page 1
Devil’s
Garden
Novella
(Cowboy Necromancer Book Five)
By Harmon Cooper
Copyright © 2023 Harmon Cooper
Copyright © 2023 Boycott Books
Edited by Andi Marlowe
Art by Sekhar Falnama
Font by Shawn King
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
Contents
Table of Contents
Cowboy Necromancer Recap
.Chapter One.
.Chapter Two.
.Chapter Three.
.Chapter Four.
.Chapter Five.
.Chapter Six.
.Chapter Seven.
.Chapter Eight.
.Chapter Nine.
.Chapter Ten.
.Chapter Eleven.
Author’s Note
Cowboy Necromancer Recap
**Contains spoilers**
Book One
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 people left were given video game-like stats, and are 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 the Godwalkers.
They failed, ending in the death of a pyromancer named Liam and a hydromancer named Karina. Those still alive, including Sterling, 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, at 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 later crucified while their leader, a man named Commodore Bones, taunts him. Sterling escapes and reaches Las Cruces. Through the shaman Don Gasper and a coyote, he learns that the Sunflower Kid is north. He also discovers that his former teammate Roxie is being held by the militia, and is encouraged by Don Gasper to look for the Sunflower Kid first.
Setting off toward Madrid, New Mexico, Sterling 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, and Sterling discovers 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. 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 the following morning in the form of Ram, 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. 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 the strange creatures with skeletal heads that have appeared after the Reset. 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 uncovering 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 that is key to bringing them down once and for all.
Book Two
Sterling appears in Deseret, an unknown location which later turns out to be post-apocalyptic Utah. He is saved by a miniature Godwalker, whom he names Beep, and meets a pair of boys riding in the Bonneville Salt Flats in their dune buggy. They take him back to their leader, the Elder of Nauvoo, who tells Sterling he will point him in the right direction if he rescues a child that has been kidnapped from their tribe. The Elder is part of the Serpents of Paradise, which is led by someone named the Oracle who lives in a place called Saltair.
In rescuing the child, Sterling is reunited with Roxie, where he pieces together that his entire crew has been inexplicably transported to Deseret. They also learn that the Elder of Nauvoo plans to kill the baby he’s been tasked with rescuing. They return to the Elder’s compound with the child, and along the way they notice a faint glow on a nearby hilltop. After dealing with the Elder, which leads to a brutal fight and a mass suicide, Sterling, Roxie, a survivor named Lily Gray, and the child he’s rescued seek refuge in a summerhouse. They reunite with the solimancer Paco the next day, which explains the glow on the hilltop. From there, it is straight to Saltair.
Along the way, they encounter a group of bandits known as the Angels of Woe. After the fight, they reach Saltair and stay with one of Lily’s acquaintances. They meet the Oracle, a telemancer, and Sterling’s enhanced cowboy hat prevents the telemancer from disrupting his thoughts. After a talk, they agree that he will investigate the appearance of a biomancer on Antelope Island, and she’ll let him level up at the Gauntlet. The Oracle also wants him to meet a researcher named Dusty Hill, known as the Chronicler.
Levels gained, Sterling, Beep, and Roxie join the Chronicler, who tells them about the ancient native peoples of the state of Utah and how they first fought the Godwalkers. The Chronicler is still trying to understand the Anasazi’s petroglyphs, but he thinks that there is something there. They reunite with the Sunflower Kid at Antelope Island, and from there head toward Nomadland and Monument Valley, where the Godwalker’s Terminal is located. They are also still searching for Don Gasper, the aeromancer named Zephyr, and the technomancer named Maron.
An ambush leads them to Zephyr, who readily joins the group. The Chronicler finds the ancient answer he is looking for in a petroglyph outside of Morgon, Utah, and he now believes that he understands how the Utah natives fought off the Godwalkers so many years ago.
On the outskirts of Midway, they meet a group of people that live in treehouses high above the woods, who tell them about two enemy necromancers that have taken over the nearby town. Sterling promises to investigate, and that same night, a zombie sent by the enemy necromancers comes for Sterling. He promises to meet with the enemy necromancers as long as Roxie can come along. Roxie and Sterling travel to Midway, Utah, and actually end up fighting Remuda and Matilda, killing the two enemy necromancers.
Sterling’s full group continues their journey into southeastern Utah, where they plan to go to Moab to meet the Elder of Icaria, who may have information on Maron. The Chronicler has already heard of a shaman at the Hole N’ the Rock, which will be their next stop after Moab.
In Moab, Sterling and Roxie have a night where they almost feel normal, which only makes him want to finish off the Godwalkers even more. The next day, after doin
Sterling consumes the hallucinatory cebil seed and is told that technomancer Maron is on Mount Tukuhnikivatz. The next day, he heads to the mountain with the group sans Don Gasper and the Chronicler, where they find Maron.
At first they think Maron is dead, but then they realize once they turn on a nearby radio that the technomancer has transferred what he refers to as his electric soul to the radio. Maron communicates with Beep, now named Strawberry by the Sunflower Kid, but the revelations of what he has learned are saved for later.
Sterling’s group heads back to the Hole N’ the Rock to find that it has been attacked by the post-apocalyptic Comanche. Sterling first learned of the modern-day Comanche from Paco, and later learned more about the territory they were expanding known as Comancheria, their ancestral lands, which was already pushing into Utah. This was why they were at the Hole N’ the Rock, and after a battle, Sterling finds that Don Gasper died protecting the Chronicler. Three of the Comanche have escaped, and they fear that they may return with larger numbers so they leave the Rock after burying Gasper.
That night, Sterling learns from Maron that Beep is inhabited by the soul of his wife, which correlates with information he has already learned about Beep, that the small alien craft brought all of them to Deseret to accomplish some task. Sterling doesn’t know how to process this, and ends up not being able to fall asleep.
Later that night he wakes up and hears motorcycles, and Roxie and Sterling head away from the campsite to deal with a trio of Comanche. They don’t end up having to fight them as an amalgamation kills two of the men, Roxie sniping the other. They learn through using Sterling’s Death Whisper power that the Comanche are two hundred strong in the nearby town of Monticello. They make a plan to disrupt their operations, but not go to all-out war with them, which Sterling cross-checks with Don Gasper’s blood to see if he agrees. After a day of rest and relaying this information back to Moab, Sterling and his team, sans the Chronicler, rescue thirty hostages from the Comanche in Monticello. They also disrupt their operations by causing a few explosions and ruining some of their motorcycles.
The former hostages are sent back to Moab, while Sterling and the others head south to meet the Chronicler at a rest stop. It is here that Maron delivers the second revelation that Sterling’s wife in the body of the Godwalker has relayed to him. The Sunflower Kid is Sterling’s child, but Beep doesn’t want him to say anything to her before the operation in Monument Valley. This troubles Sterling even more, but he reluctantly agrees.
The group heads toward Monument Valley the next morning and find it filled with Godwalkers, large and small. The plan they have devised is to disrupt the Terminal, which is beneath the ground and used as a charging station. Sterling still isn’t certain of how the Godwalkers are powered, but he is aware that it has something to do with human energy through souls.
While Sterling and the others lay down distractions, Zephyr and Paco create a heat vortex that burrows into the ground, destroying the Terminal. In the process, Sterling almost thinks that he has lost the Sunflower Kid, but he miraculously finds her in the fight and rescues the teenage biomancer. Isabelle’s soul, however, has left the miniature Godwalker, leaving any remnant of his wife gone for good.
They head back to the meeting point, Sterling and his group victorious. The plan now is to head south to Arizona, and loop back around New Mexico, to Chaco Canyon, where there is another important site for the Godwalkers. They will also need more information about this location, which the Chronicler and Paco will seek out once they reach what is left of Navajo country. Sterling also has a few things he would like to deal with back home, including Commodore Bones and the Killbillies, and the cryomancer bounty hunter named Ram.
Book Three
With one Terminal destroyed, Sterling and company plan to travel back to New Mexico by way of Arizona. Along the way, they pass through Kayenta, Arizona, where they learn the locals are being terrorized by the Comanche. An agreement is made with the town sheriff to fight the Comanche in exchange for an introduction with the Navajo Nation, who may know more about the origin of the Godwalkers. While protecting the town, Sterling and his group are joined by a Comanche who has decided to switch sides, a telemancer named Harjo. Before setting out the next morning, tragedy strikes when a Godwalker appears and kills Roxie, whose soul is transferred to Beep’s body. Roxie can no longer communicate easily with Sterling and his team without the use of technomancer Maron as a medium.
After regrouping, they head toward the Navajo Nation, where they meet with two elders. The elders don’t have any new information for them, but they do tell them of the Acoma Pueblo’s leader, who has retained her memory of the past. Along the way to the Acoma Pueblo, they encounter a group of Comanche and discover that their new leader, Quanah, is in the area. Upon a visit to the border city of Gallup, New Mexico, plans are made to spy on the Comanche once they reach the Acoma Pueblo the next day. Once they reach the pueblo, the leader of the Acoma tells them of the ancient charging grounds for the Godwalkers, one being in Chaco Canyon, which they’ve already heard about, and the other being in Bryce Canyon.
They attempt to spy on the Comanche with the hopes of perhaps meeting their leader, Quanah, or simply learning more about their forces. Zephyr takes a shot at Quanah, which leaves them scrambling to escape the Comanche camp. They manage to flee, and as they do Harjo the telemancer plants an idea in the Comanches’ minds that it was the Killbillies that have attacked the Comanche, not Sterling and company in a botched trip to uncover information.
They arrive in Madrid the next day and surprise Raylan the flectomancer and Sierra, the pyromancer that Sterling almost had relations with in the past. A plan is hatched for Sterling to go to Moab to get levels, then for a couple of them to head to Albuquerque to try to find Ram the bounty hunter.
Sterling gets ten levels the next day by farming XP, and reaches a point where he feels he can’t really grow stronger without taking on incredible enemies or figuring out a new way to farm XP. Now leveled up, Sterling, the Sunflower Kid, Zephyr, Harjo, and Godwalker Roxie head to Albuquerque. They learn that the Killbillies have infiltrated the southern part of the city and taken territory from the Barelas Glyphs.
Zephyr decides to pay her ex a visit, a woman named Nazarena who happens to be the leader of the Old Town Toros. This leads Sterling and his companions to get ambushed by the Kirtland Airmen, another gang of the city. Upon revisiting Nazarena, they are ambushed by the Killbillies, but the fight turns out to be relatively easy for them.
Sterling and his companions return to Madrid with plans to intercept Ram, whom they’ve learned is on his way to parlay with the Comanche. They move to intercept Ram and the Airmen that have joined him, but in the process, Harjo gets killed by sniper fire.
After talking to Harjo’s spirit through Sterling’s blood magic, they decide to try to have a conversation with Quanah and see if they can’t reach an agreement with the Comanche. The idea would be for the Comanche to ambush the Killbillies in western Albuquerque and seriously put a dent in Commodore Bones’ forces. After a tense standoff, their meeting with Quanah is a success, the new leader of the Comanche not the man Sterling had originally imagined him to be.
To solidify their strategy in Albuquerque, Sterling and the Sunflower Kid then meet with a member of the Alta Monte Homecidos, the fourth gang that runs the former capital of New Mexico. The Homecidos agree to squeeze the Toros in the west, at the same time the Killbillies attack, which will add confusion to the fight. Satisfied, Sterling and the Kid return to Madrid to call it a night.
After some modifications, Roxie is now able to communicate as a Godwalker, which will make things easier going forward. Raylan and Maron have also worked up an idea for Sterling to use his new ability, known as Soul Absorption, to deliver a soul-charged bomb to the underground terminals in Chaco and Bryce Canyons.
Before they get to the Godwalkers, and now in new armor crafted by Raylan, Sterling and his team go after Commodore Bones. They are easily able to kill Magdalena, the telemancer working with Commodore Bones. They take the Killbilly leader hostage. Upon portaling to the western part of Albuquerque, Sterling makes sure that the Commodore sees Comanche bring the heat. The Commodore assures Sterling that he is trading one warlord for the next, but Sterling doesn’t care. Roxie kills the Commodore as Godwalkers appear, Sterling and his team portaling away.
