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The cowboy was following them again.
He wasn’t sure if Faust had even noticed. The man had seemed a bit out of it lately, still mostly his affable self but a fair bit more...sluggish. Chronus was growing concerned by it, but his attention was more and more frequently being taken away from that and onto their unwanted third.
Chronus didn’t recognize him, but he had also gotten the impression that he wasn’t the one the stranger was interested in. There were the occasional curious looks in his direction, but those were few and far between. One of the tiniest possible clear-ups for a situation that was otherwise a complete enigma. The two of them had a stalker, but that was about as far as it got.
The man trailed after them with the persistence only humans were capable of. It had been nearly two weeks now. From that, Chronus could deduce one of two options. One, he was a very incompetent hunter, or two, he was a very, very good one. Instinct had him leaning towards the latter. For a person who, at a glance, seemed to have a stature almost matching the doctor himself, he made himself slight even in the open mesa. And that wasn’t even considering what there was to eat nearby (that was to say, nothing, unless one counted sandy dirt as a hearty meal) and the arid weather. Whyever it was that he was even following them in the first place, the stranger was good at it.
It wasn’t until nine days in that the man made himself known, and that was on purpose. Though hard to spot at a distance, Chronus had still noticed the tarp lying in their path. It had been carefully half-buried under dirt and stones, but still an obvious trap if looked at for more than a few seconds.
To his confusion, however, while he stopped in his tracks, Faust continued to trek forward.
“Faust.” He said, with a hint of alarm. “Stop. There’s a pit trap, you’re going to step in it.”
His warning went unheard. Before Chronus could stop him, the man calmly stepped onto the tarp and dropped like a rock.
“Doctor- !”
And as quickly as he’d vanished, Faust’s head popped out from the hole. He walked out as easily as he’d fallen in, like climbing a vertical pit wall was a perfectly ordinary thing to do.
Chronus felt his eye twitch behind the mask, but chose to be relieved rather than irritated. “Are you...quite alright, doctor?”
“Mmhm,” Faust replied. He continued on without a moment’s hesitation. “Let’s...get going…”
From somewhere behind him, Chronus could make out a frustrated grumble.
Had the man been interfering with the plans he shared with his fellow disciples, they already would have found a way to dispose of him. And the thought certainly did cross Chronus’ thoughts on more than one occasion. But distracted as Faust was, he absolutely would not have taken it well. The best possible scenario was that they’d get out of the desert and forget this whole thing.
Well, alright, the best scenario was that it never happened in the first place, but he could be flexible. He knew this was the best he was going to get, realistically.
++++++
“Please don’t tell me you’re going to try and eat that.”
His thinly-veiled plea wasn’t so much for the fact that a sandwich was lying in the dirt. It felt rather stupid to point out the loop of rope it was sitting in, if not for the fact that Faust looked fully unaware of it. Which was only made even more egregious by the fact that the snare loop, and by extension the tree that it was rigged to, were the only things of interest whatsoever. It was more desert as far as the eye could see, nothing at all to catch the attention except maybe the scattered rocks- one of which that Chronus could clearly see the cowboy trying to hide behind, but Faust was apparently too invested in a dirt-coated sandwich to notice.
“Nutrients...necessary…”
“Then take something from the supply bag, those are at least clean.”
“Peanut butter…”
Chronus was starting to consider it a gift that he no longer had hair, because if he did, he would be pulling it out.
“Faust.” He said, actively moving to drag the man away before he could stumble into another blatantly obvious trap. “Once was bad enough. But I will not let you-”
He neglected to realize just how long the man’s arms were, because even with his attempt to intervene Faust had no issue picking up the sandwich. And, exactly as he’d expected, the trap triggered immediately. The rope loop snagged around his wrist, and all Chronus could do was hold on and try not to yelp in panic as he was pulled along for the ride.
“Yeehaw!” A triumphant voice called from behind. “Finally got- !”
The scene ended as abruptly as it had started. The trap had worked, but had also neglected to account for how ridiculously tall Faust was. As of the moment, he was happily eating the dirt sandwich while standing on his own two feet with no concern at all. If anything, Chronus looked like far more of a mess, still clinging onto the doctor’s scrubs and dangling off his hip. The trap-setting cowboy looked utterly baffled by his second failure in a row, and was currently standing slack-jawed at its remains.
Before Chronus could think to do anything, Faust swiveled his head towards the stranger.
“First, make reservation…”
If it were anyone else, it would have felt like a smart-mouthed quip. For Faust, it was nothing more than a somewhat confusing non-sequitur. He calmly slid his hand out of the loop and continued walking, either not noticing or not caring that Chronus was still hanging off him.
As much of an annoyance as the interruptions were, he was starting to find some kind of bizarre humor in it. He had no idea if Faust felt the same way, but Chronus felt less and less bad about finding it funny with every catastrophically failed scheme that Faust just walked through without hesitation. They weren’t hazards, they were brief distractions that were admirable only in their ability to fail in increasingly absurd ways.
It almost felt cruel not to point out how they were going to go wrong. He still hadn’t the slightest idea what the man even wanted Faust for. At that point, if it still seemed worth it to not just try stabbing him, then it must have been some bizarre, incomprehensible purpose that necessitated laying out snares and tripwires instead of doing...literally anything else.
“If I may suggest-”
“Shut yer yap! ‘n don’t go tryin’ to fool me, it ain’t gonna work!”
Chronus opened his mouth, then closed it again. He simply watched on as the man’s precariously balanced boulder, exactly as he’d expected, collapsed off its perch in the complete opposite direction. The cowboy was sent hollering in panic as he ran down the opposite end of the hillside with the massive stone at his heels, while Faust slowly meandered through the valley without a care in the world.
“At this point, I’m surprised he hasn’t just asked you upfront.” Said Chronus, trailing after him. “I’m not sure why he’s so insistent on complicating it further.”
And either he’d heard him, or he simply got too fed up with contrived contraptions. Not long after that rousing failure, the two’s passage was interrupted with an open coffin laid out in the dirt. It was familiar, Chronus had spotted it a few times as the man hauled it behind him. He had assumed that was supposed to be the prison Faust was meant for. Something about it was very unwieldy in his eyes, both as something to drag around and as something that would be too small for Faust to actually fit into. Leaving it out in the open was admirably brazen, and apparently a half-decent idea, as Faust partook in his usual response to the interruptions by not breaking pace and wandering right into it.
Chronus felt a sudden panic as the lid snapped shut with Faust inside it. Even though somehow, it didn’t take any of his limbs clean off, the idea of being crunched inside a small space was not a pleasant one, and winding up in a mysterious stranger’s clutches even moreso. He’d gotten complacent with the failures, the idea that one would actually work-
An overjoyed whoop echoed across the landscape. Before he could try to stop him, the cowboy rushed out from his hiding spot and raised the sealed casket over his head in triumph.
“Lookit that! After all that, finally another UMA for the collection! And what a prize piece this’ll be!”
UMA? As in, cryptids? That was as enlightening as it was horrifying. He had assumed Faust was some kind of inhuman creature, and that was enough to hunt him down and trap him for...whatever he had in mind? None of it could be good.
The sight of him dragging Faust off finally spurred him to action. “No, no, you need to stop!”
“Easy now, buddy. I caught ‘em fair and square.” The cowboy shook him off, tugging on the coffin’s chain over his shoulder and continuing on while humming a merry tune.
Chronus summoned a spark of magical energy to form into an attack, but before he could, he watched as the coffin’s door silently popped open. While his attempted kidnapper drowned out the sounds with music, Faust slipped out and started walking away.
“Uh-” An inelegant response, and an ill-advised one in hindsight. As soon as he said anything out loud, the cowboy glanced over his shoulder in confusion and spotted his abductee calmly escaping.
“Consarnit!” The man barked, slamming his casket down on the ground and glaring at Faust. “I’m tired of playin’ games! I’m gonna get you one way or another! Even if I have to do it with my own two hands! I will catch you!”
For the first time in a while, Faust seemed to perk up. “Catch me…?”
The other man stomped closer. Halfway through, Faust burst into raspy little giggles.
“Exercise. Have to...catch me.”
At that, he turned and began running away. The cowboy, apparently as confused as Chronus was, went wide-eyed for a moment before letting out a furious grunt.
“You get back here!” He bellowed, scrambling after Faust with the coffin in hand. “I’ll get you! I’ll get you, ya tricky varmint!”
Chronus was left standing there, watching the two of them sprint across the desert mesa and into the distance. And for a moment, he found himself envying his long-gone comrades. At least they had gone out with dignity.