Preamble

In 1997 a Quake map maker by the name of Marcus Dromowicz (aka “Mexx”) released a medieval single player map; the storyline hinting that you were hunting an evil being known only as “the Bishop”. Some people liked it.

Then Mexx released a two-map package, including some special effects, that continued the chase. People sat up and took notice.

Then in 1998 Mexx wound up what became known as “the Bishop trilogy” with a pack containing all sorts of new stuff, scary sounds and the Bishop himself. If Mexx could have heard the roars of acclaimation he’d have probably gone deaf.

Some time back I began to write a Quake story, being impressed by the works at the Quake Literary Guild. Admittedly the prologue is by far the best part, only dimly related to Steve Rescoe’s map of the same name. The narrative degenerates into a travelogue from there, spiced up with the appearance of another marine halfway towards the end of Chapter 2.

So, what will happen to Oliver Petrovsky #5681279 and Jack “Raw Meat” Collins? Will they continue onward in pursuit of the Bishop? Will they remain in limbo forever?

Dunno.

Rob “Fat Controller” Cruickshank

Prologue: A Village of Dread

Was every damn world of Quake’s like this? I grumbled to myself as I clambered up to yet another rocky pass. Climbing mountainous terrain with armour and a shotgun on your back is somewhat taxing on the stamina.

Two breathy gasps greeted me: a pair of scrags. Scrags are pretty tenacious in a fight, but to my surprise a couple loads of buckshot convinced them that there was more pressing business elsewhere.

Now the scrags were gone I could have a rest and look around. The usual: depressing purplish clouds in a depressing purplish sky scudded over a landscape of depressing steep rocky slopes and depressingly thick forest.

The only thing remotely un-depressing in the scenery was what looked like a village, huddled in a clearing. Admittedly there was a very depressing castle brooding away not far from it, but what the hell? May as well drop in on the locals.

Halfway down the slope I found a small cave with some sort of ceiling-mounted slipgate. Why was it on the ceiling? I dunno. Maybe to keep the kiddies out. Couldn’t see a ladder or anything like that in the place though. I scratched my head thoughtfully as I left and nearly walked into a curious scrag.

Fortunately the scrag was as startled as I was, which was fine by me. Several shells later and the scrag went pop; unfortunately more scrags were attracted by the noise. So I got out of there by way of a most convenient stairway someone had carved into the side of the slope. Yes, I could have just jumped over the side, using my training, but then I’d‘ve needed to pause to regain my balance, which I couldn’t afford. Scout work involves travelling light, so all I had was a shotgun to play with.

Unfortunately I had an audience. Said audience belonged to the local scrag lover’s society, and lacking tomatoes to throw, settled for grenades. Remembering somebody’s quote about the ultimate performance art spectacle, I blasted away at the audience. (I had to. I didn’t have a revolver.)

The plan was simple: run all over the shop while plinking at ‘em. I know a lot of nubes think the shotgun’s little more than a desperation weapon, but it’s just the ticket for precision shots at long distance. Like the cheese ads say, good things take time. Dodging grenades just makes it take a little longer, that’s all.

When the grenades stopped going bang I dared to take a peek at the audience. It was pretty clear they’d been overwhelmed by my command performance. A backpack with a few explosives had fallen to the ground. I love it when that happens.

What I don’t love is when you walk round a corner and find some freak with a gun pointed in your direction.

The freak mentioned was done up like a peasant or something, the shotgun being the only real point of interest for the reasons mentioned earlier. He was also frightened. Not surprising, given the noise earlier. His boomstick was almost as ratty as he was, but with a side order of rust.

“Stay back!” Was that a tremor of fear in his voice? I put on my most disarming smile. “Hey, c’mon, I just got down here, I wasted a whole buncha scrags—”

“Get back!” (Uh-oh. This guy’s nearly mad from fright. Why?)

I admit that my old CO would’ve had a fit, but it wasn’t as if I had a choice. Slowly, I placed my gun on the ground and backed away, hands spread. I mean, that’s a friendly gesture, right?

Obviously wrong. Gun Guy’s eyes went wild with fright and if I hadn’t dropped right then I’d be an ex-Marine. Thank God for convenient tree roots.

Gun Guy aimed at me again, but this time the old gun blew apart at the breech. He fell as if — well, as if a low-flying gun stock had clouted him on the chin. I retrieved my own weapon and went over to check him out.

This wasn’t good. His eyes were rolled up in his head, bloody nose, pretty bad concussion. I thought a bit, then picked him up and trotted over to what looked like a gatehouse of some kind by a very impressive gate in the wall surrounding the village.

Which it was, complete with guard. Who gave me much the same look as my concussed cargo had. And was halfway to grabbing his gun, but obviously confused.

“What? Have I got horns or something?” I was getting pissed at this. “Now c’mon. This guy needs help right now.”

The guard blinked at me, then at the guy I carried, then turned to a small hole in the wall and spoke quickly into it. Some kind of speaking tube. After listening for a bit, he finally went to one big lever and yanked it.

The mechanism was fairly old styled, but worked very nicely. The gate rose majestically into the air, revealing what looked like a very nice Tudor-style village. The view was slightly obscured by the number of men brandishing weapons, the small children trying to get a look at whatever the excitement was about, and a suprisingly small rabble.

As I walked forward with my burden, I had the feeling something was wrong here. But being more concerned with a) my still-unconcious passenger, and b) the evident fear of the townsfolk, and c) the unpleasant, pointy, and probably tetanus-inducing nature of the weapons of the local constabulary, I couldn’t put my finger on it.

Nobody said a word. Nobody moved, except the boys who weren’t being held fast by their fathers. So I said a few words. “Look, can someone help this guy? ‘Cause my arms are getting tired.”

Still no movement on their part. One man finally managed to break the silence.

“Why should you care? After what you’ve done to us? To our children?“

Uh-oh. Looks like someone’s got a short fuse.

“And our daughters! What have you done to my Arina?” Oh, God, he thinks I’m someone else! Better think quick or I’m dead.

One quick think later and I stoop and lower Gun Guy to the ground. This leaves both hands free to remove my helmet.

Why is everyone surprised? Especially that guy who asked after his “Arina”? A murmur does the rounds. “Not the Bishop it’s not the bishop not the bishop…” Weapons are lowered. A short squat barrel-shaped guy steps forward. “Forgive us, stranger. We thought you were the lord of that keep yonder.” With a jerk of his chin indicating the craggy and somehow even more depressing keep I noticed earlier.

The keep of the Bishop. Useful intel.

Other useful intel is that the village’s inn has good food and good ale, and that Gun Guy — real name Eryl — is sorry he thought I was this Bishop everyone’s so scared of. But when I ask about Bishop, everyone goes silent, and looks to one very old man. Some elderbeard I suppose.

The elderbeard rises from his seat, and fingers the old facial foliage while gazing at me. Then he starts to speak.

Now, I like a good story. But the problem with this story is that every time the old guy says “Bishop” I think of Steve Bishop, serial 5691167. My old buddy. One of those guys with ambition. A loner. Like you one minute and the next bite your head off for blocking his sun.

Then he went AWOL. It took quite some time before anyone connected Steve — our Steve! — with the killings of several young women. He was captured, found guilty, and sent to the chair.

He never arrived.

Elderbeard’s tale, unfortunately, brings together too many loose threads. How Steve could vanish from a Death Row cell. Where all the young women in this village have gone. Why the guy who demanded to know about his Arina is drinking himself to death in the corner.

What our ol’ buddy Mister Quake has been doing since Shub-Niggurath got the treatment.

And why everyone thought I was Bish until I took my helmet off.

Chapter 1: A Bishop’s Bane

Last night I slipsignalled base a sitrep — situation report, for those who don’t speak military — and was told to suspend my current mission and go for Steve. Wanted dead or dead.

Now, when given a command like that, you don’t sleep much. Which is when I heard a faint voice over the slipsignal receiver.

“Ol-ly Ol-ly oxen free…”

I was bolt upright in a flash goggling at the ‘ceiver. “Steve??”

“Bishop, yes.”

He never called himself Bishop before. This is definitely Not Good. And since when did he get the accent? His intonation sounds like a caricature of some possessed person. Could’ve got a job voicing Pazuzu in The Exorcist. Anyhow, I manage to get out, “What is it?”

“Advice.”

This was not Steven Bishop serial number 5691167. Steve was almost impossible to shut up. And he certainly couldn’t imbue one word with that much menace.

And I don’t know what happened to the girl who screamed over the ‘ceiver then, but I hit the ceiling like a cartoon cat. Another agonised wail managed to macramé my innards, then merciful silence, broken only by not-Steve’s voice.

“Begone.”

I don’t need to tell you I didn’t sleep at all that night. What in the name of God had happened to Bish? What had Quake offered him? What had it demanded?

As the false dawn grew and faded I realised I only really had one option. I also had a number of choice expletives I could use in reference to it, but I settled on good ol’ “fuck”, Swiss army knife of swear-words. Took three tries before it had the right ring to it.

I won’t bore you with the leavetaking, or the installation of a slipmat beacon, or the aggravating journey up an overgrown path to Bishop’s — I already didn’t think of him as Steve anymore — castle. In fact, things didn’t get interesting until I got past the doors.
——
Frankly, folks, I get annoyed at doors that slam shut behind me. Particularly ones that slam shut with that tone of finality. I mention it because this time I didn’t have time to resent all that, because of a sixpack of fiends that immediately tried to jump me.

For your information, a fiend resembles a six-foot frog with long claws, long teeth, and a pink paint job. All that red meat in its diet. One is trouble. Two is time for serious panic. Six requires you to sidestep like a madman and look for an exit.

A shaft of light struck what looked like a raised bit of flooring. I hit it about a second later, hard enough to activate the mechanism that lifted me out of range, but not before one pinkie gave me a nasty slash on the ankle. I considered dropping some bombs on them, but sadly didn’t have any.

The floor above had a big door (locked), a passage (barred), an SNG in a cage (also barred) and, despite the slight distraction of some canned goods with a sword, another passage. Since the last item wasn’t obstructed it made my choice of direction easy.

Trotting up a hallway and ducking a nasty little nailgun trap, I found my self in some sort of open area with a nice view of a very large tower off to the left. The barred passage led there, no doubt. All of which was eclipsed by the fact that the most gorgeous double barrel shottie was sitting in the middle of the yard, just begging to be picked up.

One of these days I’ll learn. Grab a gun, spring a trap. In this case, knights, heavy on the jalapéno. Yes, the exits were blocked until I finished them off. Oh, there were more of the buggers around the corner. Just thought you might want to know.

The corridor I was following dropped a bit, then came to a staircase leading down to the bottom of a chamber opening onto some dark halls with dungeon written all over them. But not over Kermit the Fiend who was hiding under the steps. I pondered at high speed back upstairs, then unlimbered the old boomstick and proceeded to take potshots at the raging monster below.

The dungeon was crawling with meat, clawed, canned and waving chainsaws. The halls twisted and turned in a way clearly designed to baffle escape. It certainly baffled me. To be frank, I’m not sure how I found the cells.

The cells were occupied only by the newly dead. The Bishop obviously didn’t subscribe to leaving captives to be rescued. The youngest couldn’t have been older than ten…

I find it hard to write about this. For all I know, I could’ve killed that minion who’d done the deed with my bare hands. Maybe I did.

Actually, only one cell was empty, and open. Odd. I went over and squinted at it suspiciously.

“Get in!”

Either there was quite some force behind those words, or I set off a trap. Anyway, somethingshoved me into the cell and the bars slammed shut.

Clever. No doubt the Bishop was laughing up his sleeve, if he still had a sleeve. Leave me here to rot, no doubt, until he was good and ready to deal with his old buddy Oliver. The bars were thick enough to be axeproof, and too close for explosives. I sat in the faint light and considered. Idly, I wondered when I had stopped thinking of the Bishop as Steve.

Then I wondered why I had stopped thinking, period.

The faint light was coming from a crack in the floor. Axe in hand, I looked closer. Yes, it was: a secret trapdoor.

I clouted the crack and was taken off guard when the floor retreated into the wall. I fell down some stairs and landed at the feet of an angel.

Not an angel. Angels don’t smell that bad. Nor do they try to garotte you with their own rapidly decomposing innards. I jumped up, knocking over the zombie, and looked around.

A second set of steps was at the other end of the low chamber, and a nice grenade launcher. Pity about the zombies in between me and it though.

Halfway through my mad dash I heard the by now tiresome sound of an aroused fiend. I then heard a nasty thock, followed by the unmistakable sound of a fiend slicing and dicing. I grabbed for the ‘nadestick, spun around, and was well pleased.

There is no difference between a zombie’s IQ and that of a fiend. Nor their grudge-holding ability. One of the zombies had conked the fiend, who had turned on its new tormentor. Fortunately, zombies tend to keep on coming, which meant I could stop worrying about them and get on to the other steps. All in all, the fiend wasn’t long for this world.

One mad scramble later I was far enough away from the zombies to let fly. It was the least I could do for them; most had been female, young, and pretty badly mangled from the looks of things. Please don’t ask for details.

Oh, alright. “Ritual sacrifice”. Satisfied?

With nowhere else to go, I bumbled down a corridor, ending up in some sort of antechamber. Another corridor led back to some bars, a button and a sackload of excited fiends.

Ever gone fishing with grenades? Well, forget that. The sweetest moment is when you get to cack all over an enemy that can’t retaliate. I just kept lobbing ‘nades in until things stopped moving, especially the ones with claws and fangs.

I eyed the button with interest. A crudely scratched word, “tower”, explained its use. I tapped the bars blocking me from what I now recognised as the entryway, noting the button jiggled a bit. That was clear; Bishop had a direct route from dungeon to tower.

Punching the button had a few side effects though. One was pink and leaped at me from a hidden cell. The other had the bad judgement to miss me with its grenade and clobber pinky. I left the two new-found friends to their bonding session and hurried up the lift.
——
The tower was simple enough to navigate, if you discount the scrags. Scrags may be fairly flimsy, but they can fly, and that’s real acid they spit, and a whole pack therefore can be a severe menace.

For some reason though, these scrags seemed almost half asleep. Sure, some were far more alert, but, on the whole I did more damage than dodging. I couldn’t figure out why until I reached the top.

Scrag spit has two functions. One is as a weapon. The other is to predigest its food… whether or not the food is tied down and resisting to the best of her — its — ability.

After my stomach had stopped heaving and the buzzing sparkly lights had faded, I managed to look around. Carcasses, evil-looking symbols, and a key opposite the staircase. Open locks, whoever knocks ‘em off.

Halfway back down I heard a by now familiar screech. This was getting tiresome. So how do you put the zing back into meeting your umpteenth fiend? You tease it, that’s what. I went down a bit further, sat on the edge, took off my boots and let my feet cool off in the pleasant breeze made by the fiend not quite being able to reach my toes.

Then one of my socks fell over the edge.

To this day, one of the moments I treasure is the expression on that fiend’s face as it realised that certain things are best left uneaten.

However, I had to go, so I put the poor thing out of its misery, found my sock, wrung out as much fiend-slobber as I could, and headed over to the nearest door.

Which wouldn’t open. Damn. I turned around, headed over to the lift shaft, and paused. TheSNG cage was open. I looked around — why, I don’t know, I hadn’t seen any traps last time — and reached out and snagged the new toy and got down the shaft before something bad happened.

Unfortunately, I’d forgotten about Mister Ogre and Mister Fiend, who were becoming close buddies down there. While the ogre was no longer in any state to care, the fiend was nicely fed and looking for more.

But I had my new toy, and soon added a few new holes to the ones made by ogre ‘nades. All the air went out of the beast and it deflated quite nicely.

Looking around, I noticed a big ol’ door that had escaped my attention before. Key was a good fit too.

Behind the door? More fiends. An ogre or two. Boring, red brick passages. All of which wound down to something strange.

It was some sort of wooden enclosure, that’s all I could tell, with a ramp sort of ending in midair over it. I wondered what the Bishop kept here. Fiends, most likely. That’d go with the bloody claw marks. Kneeling over the edge, I squinted harder and could make out something shaped like a knife on the wall.

Nowhere else to go, so I dropped into the pit and headed over to the knife-thing. At one point the floor sounded hollow; I had a good peer but couldn’t see what was down there.

The knife shape was a switch. I knew this because when I touched it there was a click. Looking around I saw more on the other walls. Things were alright until button number three when the far side of the pit opened and… yep. More fiends. The Bishop obviously liked fiends.

Several bloody minutes later, I sank to the ground and got my breath back. Eventually, I managed to lurch erect and stagger over to where the wall had opened. This was primarily to do with the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen so far – a Thunderbolt. Or, if you don’t know a Perforator from a peashooter, a lightning gun. And that’s when I found button number four.

Grinding noises, a hole appeared, and lo and behold a golden key arose from it. Cunning place to put it too. I pocketed this treasure, sauntered through the newly opened teleport and walked smack into the largest, hairiest, smelliest, PO’d-est shambler you’ve ever met.

Shamblers are cold-loving creatures. This is known because someone found their home dimension, and it’s all snow and ice. There they’re placid and actually quite shy, but as the temperature rises so does their discomfort. And their angry level. This shambler probably had been sweltering in the heat for some time, so understandably I said something like “yik!” and bolted out of range of its claws.

Now, shamblers have this ability to zap their prey with electricity. I have no idea how. But it hurts. and that’s all I want to say about it. And it makes fighting the buggers very exciting indeed.

This particular shambler managed to corner me at the ramp, which meant I couldn’t escape what looked like a more crushing tackle than I’d ever encountered on the footy field. Then I tripped.

Sham couldn’t stop in time, went over the edge and hit the ground with a sickening crack.

I managed to wriggle out from under it. It didn’t move. I dived behind a handy wall. It still didn’t move. I plinked a shell at it, whereupon it didn’t move. It was about this time I realised that the plunge off the ramp had snapped its neck. I couldn’t resist the urge…

Now, I’ve had a few good meals in my time, but nothing beats fresh shambler gonads, boiled, with a little dehydrated veg soup. Especially when the rest of the carcass is still steaming warm, was previously trying to have you for dinner, and making a lovely headrest. There’s talk, I’ve heard, about starting a shambler farm on Earth; not a bad idea either. Beats prairie oysters any day.

Happier, belching, and feeling quite contented, I sauntered back up to the main keep and sprang the lock. Big stairs, descending down and to the left.

I never was very good at sports, but my old gym teacher would have gone into raptures at my artful dodging at this point. There were vores down there, more zombie girls, and more goddamn fiends. When I finally reached the altar my ears were ringing from explosion after explosion and I was limping from another wound to my ankle.

The altar had obviously seen a lot of use. Blood and gore made indelible stains on the surface, which moved when I bumped it. So I bumped it again, on purpose this time. The whole top slid back to reveal a shaft going down… to what?

With the pitter-patter of little problems closing in from behind, I knew I’d find out fast. With some difficulty I heaved myself over the edge of the altar, stood up, then jumped.

The chamber below held the unmistakable shape of a slipgate, the blood used in the opening rites still damp enough to show footprints on the bottom edge. The Bishop had already left.

I quickly scanned the sigils and symbols scrawled on the metal, trying to glean some idea of where The Bishop was headed. Then I saw, in very small letters, the word “Domino” in a corner.

Nobody enters a new slipgate without telling base. So that’s what I did before I continued pursuing the thing which had been Steve Bishop. After all, that’s the drill.

Chapter 2: Prelude to Apocalypse

Coterminous with all Time and Space…

That line from an old Lovecraft novel always comes to mind when slipping.

Coterminous with all Time and Space…

Slipping takes no time and all time, it seems. Some have been known to go mad from the sensory deprivation. You are nowhere and everywhere at once. You are utterly alone, but knowSomething has seen you. There’s quite a debate about whether Quake was in fact Yog-Sothoth or something like that. Airy-fairy stuff.

Then something strange happened.

An image came to my mind; a dark haired figure under threat. I couldn’t get much more than that; the sensation was cut off abruptly, like someone shutting a door.

And I continued to slip, coterminous with all Time and Space.
——
Crudely cut stone formed a path to the gate I had just emerged from. Peculiar metal struts jutted from the rock, seeming to support something. A bluish metallic citadel reared off to my left, and then I began to deal with my welcoming committee.

The struts seemed designed to impede you; this meant that the dogs, rather than the scrags or ogres, were a problem. Fortunately one scrag clipped an ogre and the two started discussing etiquette, relieving my problems a bit. Afterwards, I absently wiped most of the blood off and took another look round.

The purplish sky provided the first clue; the strange distortion, as if seen from inside a giant fisheye lens, proved beyond doubt that this was an artificial dimension — a prison world, confining God knew what. Our own sealfields had a similar effect.

However, the only way to find out what was held here was to enter the blue metal citadel, and the only entrance was right beside me. So I entered it.

In the door and round the corner and down the stairs was a fair-sized room, populated by the ol’ tin cans and a few ogres up on a balcony. However, what really interested me were the closed-off hallways; one with a key symbol and one without. A few pokes and prods convinced me that trying to blast my way through was folly, so I went to explore the balcony’s exit.

The corridor was wide and squat, with odd nubblies sticking out of the walls. As I approached the closest one there was a loud bang, right in my ear, and a large and nasty-looking spike whizzed past my kneecaps to smash against the opposite wall.

Beyond the spike-shooters was a small complex of rooms, all based around a switch about my height. I gave the thing a slap — and promptly collapsed, overwhelmed by a vision of opening — I can’t describe it any better. After I’d recovered from the experience I headed back out — and found that one of the hallways had opened. I followed the corridor up and along, until I found myself outside again.

I had a further nosey, discovering a locked door, with a well-defended key nearby. The only thing to do was duck down a nearby cave.

The caves showed signs of being worked; the steps were not natural, nor was the watercourse. Peering round a corner confirmed my suspicions — stone gave way to metal panels. Oddly gritty light was made even grittier by the acrid fumes of slime.

I promptly sneezed, and monsters seemingly climbed out of the walls.

After the shooting had stopped and I’d cleaned up by kicking the dead into the corrosive ooze, I had a further noodle. A switch reposed in glorious isolation at the far end of a wide corridor. Now, in my line of work, switches are made to be pressed. So I merrily stalked up the corridor, all senses on full alert for any signs of a trap; things like the flash of a teleport, or angry snarls, or gunfire. That sort of thing.

“Rot in hell.”

Not exactly the sort of thing you normally hear, but by the time the sentence was spoken I was already racing back the way I came, heading for a defensive position I spotted earlier — with a sizeable force of the Bishop’s little friends following me.

Ever played “King of the Castle”? Well, I was playing the grown-up version of it, in which you try to stay in your elevated position and blow away everybody else. When the twitching ceased I headed back to the switch and, as it turned out, a nice game of Let’s Clean Up The Ones That Got Away.

Kicking the switch into action caused another vision: of that key I’d seen before. This time things were more distinct; I now saw that the key was grabbable now.

Coming out of the trance, I first thought the faint whistling was a side effect of the switch. Then I heard another, and knew.

By the time I reached the cave exit and the key I was even more battered, limping slightly from a nasty burn on my leg. Picking it up, I realised glumly it wouldn’t open the bars. The nearby doors accepted the key gladly. Stalking through, I froze at the sound of something breathing, the hollow rasping exhalation echoing through the complex.

Advancing slowly, I eventually stepped out onto a set of metal bars over a lava pit. The far end of the corridor was barred, but I suspected that something to open it was nearby.

Then the bars began to move sideways into the wall.

Naturally, I bolted back the way I came (again), but I was too far away. I screamed once as I fell towards certain, and unpleasant, death.

And landed hard on hot metal — bars that hadn’t been there before. Ducking scrags, I leapt for a previously concealed teleport. Bishop obviously had developed a very perverse sense of humour!

The teleport took me to a small hidden room with a button on it. At first, I’ll admit, I didn’t quite see what it did, apart from open out onto some new friends. However, after firmly convincing them I didn’t want to play, I saw that the trap had closed itself, and the bars at the far end were open.

I never saw what was making all the noise. It sure wasn’t the zombies all around, nor the ogres. But the noise was loudest near a key — a key that would open the bars, perhaps.

I siezed the key and spun around expectantly.

Nothing happened.

Well, not right then. The ambush came further along in my journey back to those bars near the start. Somewhat more battered and bloodied, I touched the key to the bars, and watched their stately rise.

“Name and number, asshole.”

Chapter 3: Mordrigor’s Demise

“Petrovsky. Oliver. 5681279.” I managed to get the words out by rote. “Christ, Meat, what the fuck are you doing here?”

Jack ‘Raw Meat’ Collins — Meat for short — was, like Bishop, two people. He was a crack soldier, and one of those annoying kids who never grew up. I remembered that in Basic he always seemed to be wearing toothbrushes out on floors. His party trick was to consume an entire pack of sausages. Uncooked, please note, and usually on top of a few beers. The fact he usually kept them
down earned him his nickname.

I couldn’t stand the man.

“I was sent to catch up to you as backup,” Meat was explaining. “They know how you felt when Steve was caught, so they decided you might need backup.”

“I don’t need backup. I got this far, by myself, just fine.” A boast, since I was covered in lacerations from fiend claws. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

Meat grabbed my arm. “No. I won’t. Not until I’ve given you a full sitrep.”

“Full?”

“Yeah. You hear of a girl called Domino? Black hair, runs a nice realm, really doesn’t want to be Bish’s bride?”

I blinked. “No, but I saw something like that in a vision while slipping here. And that name was on the gate I used to get here as well.”

“I wouldn’t know about the gate,” Meat shrugged, “but we’ve been digging through Bish’s possessions. He mentions this Domino quite a lot, in detail.” He grinned. “Seems to’ve had quite a crush on her.”

“The Bishop always was an obsessive type, and I can think of better situations to be in than being a subject of Bishop’s infatuation. If you ask me, I think the man’s insane.”

Meat’s grin fell away. “He is.” He said it with uncharacteristic solemnity. “And I’ve been given specific instructions to ensure that this Domino is protected at any cost. The brass would really like to have her on our side.”

“That doesn’t sound too hard,” I smirked, “find Bishop and stick a couple rockets up his ass.”

Meat chuckled. “Sounds like a plan. Toss for point?”
——
What caused the bars to slam down again, I’ll never know. No sooner had we passed beneath them when there was an ominous creak, followed by the thunderous crash of several tons of wood and metal smashing onto the floor.

“No going back,” Meat reported. With no other choice, we moved carefully down a broad hallway, Meat nervously eyeing the ceiling for anything else that might suddenly fall on us.

The hallway dog-legged before opening onto some sort of gallery. A walkway topped the wall in front of us; On it a single armoured figure stood, staring at us. And that was unusual.

“Two?” The derisive voice of thefigure was oddly hollow. “Entire armies hath not the might to slay my lord, The Bishop.”

Meat spoke up. “Yeah? Well maybe we’ll get lucky.” He flicked out a nailgun. “Stomach or head shot suit you?”

The figure didn’t reply. He simply turned his head slightly, then nodded.

The hissing, bellows and roars stunned us slightly for a moment: The wierd knight had sprung a trap! It seemed that scrags and grenades filled the air, and the floor was awash in sharp claws and blades. Instinctively the two of us backed up the steps to the silver key bars…

——

…and here, for now, it ends. Will Olly and Meat
beard Bishop in his lair? Will Domino be rescued from the Bishop’s clutches? Will some
Quakehead spoil the ending for you? Ah, buggered if I know. God knows when I’ll get back
to work on it.