The morning sun lifted itself above the Iron Forest, serenaded by the welcoming chirping of something that was probably once a cockerel. In the city's rusted corners and steel-enclosed environs, all manner of unknown creatures purred or roared or yawned themselves awake and went about the daily operation of finding ways to either kill each other, obscure themselves from predators, or simply bask in the desert sun and sip from the pools of blood that had been left behind by the beasts of the night. These ghoulish beings stalked the desert city without concern for anyone but themselves. As those of the Old World often said, "Numero Uno" had to be "looked out for" above all else. Truly, such beings were the triumph of evolutionary theory.

Yet, tapping his tiny paws on the soggy ground floor of what was once Apartment Block Y, there was one creature that would cause Darwin himself to turn in his grave. His name was Jespar, and presently he was busying himself with the task of helping another. Having run out of supplies above for his recovering companion, he was forced to take up the role of the wasteland scavenger. He did so; it must be said, with some degree of pride. He'd show Rain-Born that he was more helpful than some base piece of comic relief.

He sniffed the air and took in the musky scent of dead electronics and mold-laden door handles that seemed to permeate the foundations of the building. He had raided just about every other apartment upstairs for ice but had found only ash and dust in the vacant refrigerators of the Old Ones. He chuckled at himself. Even he was calling them that now. It took him a solid minute to address the fact that he was one of them, making him feel like even more of a relic than before.

As he searched, he was blissfully unaware of another creature that watched him from afar, indeed, had been watching him and his companion for some time – since they had first made camp in the forgotten office building that this creature had been proud to call its home.

In seeing the dog and the girl, this citizen of the Iron Forest had become intrigued – you might even say enraptured, particularly with the wise-cracking canine.

The creature brought a small, chipped picture frame out of the backpack strapped to its waist to confirm its suspicions. It looked it over its contents in the faint glow that shimmered in the bowels of the apartments and nodded to itself as though satisfied.

Then its focus returned to Jespar, and it followed him with quizzical eyes – its form little more than a reptilian shape flitting through shadowed corners and moldy stairwells, watching him with fascination.

However, Jespar's mind was not preoccupied with such trivial matters as who (or what) was tailing him. Instead, he was burdened with his own problems:

My kingdom for some ice, he was thinking as he sniffed around another deserted home. A cold pack. One of those squeezable ones I scavenged up earlier – anything. Or some water. Doesn't have to be fresh. The Chief"s saved my life more times than I can count. It's a long shot, but even something basic to quench her thirst would help. Something to take the edge off...

Jespar pushed through a heavy door, letting the rusted padlock and chains that once bound it fall to the ground, and he found himself in what must have been the foyer of this apartment block. The great emblazoned "Y" in the center of the floor told him that, as well as the crumbling check-in desk and dilapidated elevators with their eerie dark throats that led into the infinite nothingness deep in the city's bowels. He sensed movement outside the humified windows and heat emanating from something just beyond the main door. So, he kept himself low, scanning the interior for anything that might be useful to The Chief.

Jespar was not a believer in divine intervention. But at that very moment, his eyes set upon a cobweb-strewn vending machine, its blinking light betraying some sign of activity, lodged in the corner of the waterlogged ground floor foyer.

And within its mechanical, twisting innards, there were treasures beyond his wildest imagining:

There was water, sparkling in the desert sun that streamed in through the glass windows.

Bottled water.

Pure. Bottled. Water.

He barely even hesitated. He simply turned, lifted his back leg, and gave the machine a stout kick to break the glass casing.

"Ouch!"

Jespar sniffed, lowered his leg, and slowly turned towards the direction this sudden outburst had come from.

"Uh," he began. "I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me!" a raspy, snarky voice boomed from the vending machine's drink flap. "What the bloody hell do you think you're doing?"

Jespar, more bewildered than surprised, merely shook his head. "A talking vending machine. Really?"

"What do you mean "really"? The voice drooled again, mockingly. "You'd do well to respect your betters, you grotty little thing."

In Jespar's mind, he immediately started running through several different permutations of how this particular exchange might play out. He decided to try the one where he exercised patience.

"Alright," he said, brimming with a sunshine smile, like a young churchgoer garbed in his Sunday best. "Listen, Vendo, I –"

"Venchenzo!"

"Eh?"

"My name, mutt," the machine intoned. "Is Sir Venchenzo IV, quencher of thirst and pardoner of the parched. You would do well to remember it, for my glory is soon to spread forth from the throats of all who taste from my spring."

You've gotta be shitting me, Jespar thought.

He tried again. "Ok. Ahem. Oh! Wise and most illustrious Sir Venchenzo IV! I find myself in dire need of your bottled beverages."

Jespar was almost sure he heard something in the foyer snigger as he spoke, but he put it down to his paranoia mixed with consternation as the machine gave him an indignant snort, its cans and bottles rattling within its frame. How it produced the sound was beyond him.

"Hmpf. A mangy hound of The Deadlands comes before the Great Venchenzo IV and demands succor! The gall. The audacity. I tell you – you blustering, galivanting flea-bag – I know what you're really looking for. If you will accept the advice of your elders, you would do well to listen: your quest is vain. It is gone from this world.

Keep your cool, old boy, Jespar cautioned himself, his eyes trained on the dangling water bottle inside this hulking mechanized headache.

"Look, buddy, I just want some water. Can you help me out?"

The machine buzzed slightly as though it was considering his request. Then something inside it rattled with such ferocity that it made Jespar step back.

"Fifty cents!" it roared.

Jespar just blinked at him.

"Come again?"

"Hmpf. Do your ears betray your ignorance just as much as your eyes, hound? A tribute must be paid for access to the Great Venchenzo's hoard. Deliver your coinage to the sacred slot."

Jespar kept himself calm as he thought privately about what exactly he'd like to deliver to this upstart machine.

"Listen," he replied. "Maybe you haven't noticed, but I'm all outta cash, and they don't do much about currency exchange in Post-Apocalyptia, dig?"

"You have come before me unprepared, hound?" Venchenzo roared again. "Then I cannot help you. Good day to you, Sir, and now move along. A line is forming behind you."

Jespar looked behind him to see merely a tiny rodent nibbling on a speck of plaster from a nearby wall.

He thought of The Chief up there, sweating and suffering without any say in the matter, and swallowed the ire rising in his throat like bile. He decided that, for her, he'd try one more time. He recalled the tone she'd taken as she'd talked to some of the spirits of the Wastes. She spoke with reverence, with respect, and even with a kind of awe. They liked that, he was sure.

Ok, he thought as he cleared his throat. I'll play this game.

"Oh, Sir Venchenzo," he began. "Champion of the great and renowned Apartment Block Y, Guardian of the Sacred Waters of Life, hear me: I seek your treasure to aid a friend. Surely, good sir, you know the laws of equivalent exchange. I have many secrets I could share with you and items worth bartering. In return, I ask for only one bottle of your finest."

He studied the machine while surreptitiously licking his tongue as only a creature as dexterous in using this muscle could, trying to wipe away the tainted saliva that gave voice to such banal speech.

A long drawn out "Hmmmmmmm" resounded from somewhere deep within the device, and finally, it spewed forth its proclamation: "A riddle then, base creature. We shall barter with words, not with coins or items."

Jespar suppressed a sigh. "Why, though?"

"It is the only true test of a gentleman's mettle!" Venchenzo screeched, scaring away the chewing rodent behind Jespar. "To win my treasures, you shall entertain me with your futile attempts to breach the fortress of my cunning. I ask you: do you accept the challenge?"

"This is the most obnoxious thing I've ever experienced."

"Is that an admission of defeat, dog?" Venchenzo laughed, somehow, his rectangular base staggering back as he chuckled. "Art thou chicken and not of the canine breed after all?"

"Fine," Jespar barked back, clenching his teeth but still keeping his cool.

Chief, you'd better appreciate this fucking water. It better be the best damn water you've ever tasted because I'm a hot little potato about to burst right now.

"The riddle is thus!" The postulating machine bellowed, rolling the "r" of the word as though the exercise in speech gave him more entertainment than he'd ever had in his "life".

"I am higher than highest, lower than lowest, worse than the Devil, greater than God, dead creatures eat me, and if you eat me, you die. What am I?"

After he'd finished, he heard the machine give an indignant "hmpf" of satisfaction.

Jespar merely stared back at him, completely unimpressed.

"Nothing."

The machine did not speak. A few seconds passed.

"I beg your pardon?" it croaked.

"The answer," Jespar explained with a sigh. "Nothings lower than lowest, nothings higher than highest, nothings better than God or worse than the devil. The dead eat nothing, and if we eat nothing, we die. The answer is nothing."

"Eh," Vecnhenzo replied. "Yes, well. That was merely the starting draw! Purely a warmup, you understand. Yes. Now our main match shall proceed!"

"Listen, buddy," Jespar barked. "You said "a" riddle. I've answered it. Now gimmie the Goddamn water."

"Impertinence!" Venchenzo barked back. "You shall face the wrath of my second riddle! Hear it and tremor: I am neither a guest nor a trespasser be, in this place I belong, it belongs also to me. Of what do I –"

"Home," Jespar answered.

Venchenzo's gasp of fury mixed with confusion and dismay echoed through the whole foyer, and Jespar's sly smile did nothing to alleviate the machine's dwindling grasp on reality.

"I hate to tell you this, buddy," the dastardly dog said with a shrug. "But out of anyone you could have met here, I'm literally the only person who knows everything you do and who'd be willing to give you the time of day. Now, my drink. I think I've earned it."

He sat and waited patiently for the bottle to fall. At this point, he'd take it for himself if he could. But the machine's twisted innards did not budge.

"Ahem," he said. "Make with the treasure, Venny."

"Nay," came the reply. "I shall not. You may know the answers to The Great Questions, but your language is foul with disrespect and discontent. You would use my pure treasures to sow discord, not harmony. I shall not abide by our agreement. Besides, you cheated."

"Oh!" Jespar shouted, standing on his hind legs and leaping up at the machine. "You think so? Me? Disrespectful? A cheat? Heavens, no. In fact, I've got a riddle for you, buddy."

The machine snorted. "Hmpf. I might as well. You might offer me some semblance of entertainment. Out with it, then."

Jespar stared at the water and braced his claws. "I'm thinking of a seven-letter word. It starts with an "a" and ends with a "sshole" – what is it?"

Venchenzo's light blinked twice. "I beg your-"

"ASSHOLE!"

With that as his battle cry, Jespar threw himself at the machine till it toppled over on its side. He scratched at the glass screen and tried tearing it off at its hinges with his fangs while Venchenzo's mechanical wails ripped through the dog's ears. He could feel the glass give way; if he could push through the sounds, the thing was making and the curses it kept throwing at him, he could at least get at one measly bottle before retreating. The thing couldn't do shit about it – he had no legs. Or at least, none Jespar could see.

Then a deafening noise rang out from deep within the machine, so paralyzing that Jespar fell from its shattered torso and was forced to shield his ears.

"THEFT. THEFT," the machine's voice rang out, stronger than before, piercing like a spear driving itself through Jespar's brain. "THEFT IN PROGRESS. THEFT IN PROGRESS. RESPOND. THEFT IN PROGRESS."

Jespar tried to regain his composure as the voice breached even the glass of the windows, shattering them and throwing shards across the room. He moved away as quickly as he could, ducking behind the front desk and keeping his ears down.

Only then, peeking out from the desk, did he see something emerge from the door he'd entered.

It was a form at once lithe and burly, with broad shoulders covered in scales and blades that had tried vainly to dent the creature's hide. Its slick green limbs extended from a body that looked human but had far more in common with a suit of emerald-plated chainmail. Two claws glinted in the dark opening to the foyer, and high above them hovered a pair of black slits drawn across two amber eyes – the eyes of a reptile stalking its next meal. A slime-coated tail tapped the floor before it, and, satisfied that the foyer floor posed no significant danger, it immediately surged forwards.

"THEFT IN PROGRESS," Venchenzo sounded off like a dystopian siren. "NEUTRALIZE THE THIEF."

"Oh fuck me, it's the fuzz," Jespar spat as he turned without another thought and bolted towards the only open cavity he could see that heralded at least some escape: the vacant elevators.

Behind him, he heard the roar of the man-lizard that bounded after him on all fours while the still scrabbling machine belched out its call for aid so that all the Dead City could hear it.

Jespar looked over the precipice of the elevator and gulped with a mouth still dry with arid desert humidity. He didn't look back.

"I just wanted some Goddamn water!" he cried before plunging headfirst into the unknown.