There really was not much to look at in the sheer desert, even when flying. Besides, no one besides maybe Elizabeth was in any mood to talk after what they had just witnessed - and conversations are hard to have alone - so that did not improve their mood any. Despite best efforts, they had not managed to grasp any tracks. Whatever might have once been there had been either erased by the desert winds or beyond their ken to notice. The mysterious tragedy - or outright slaughter - thus remained unresolved for the moment.
They headed North again - easy to tell direction with a landmark like the Barrier Mountains still visible behind. Every couple minutes Irwyn would help Alice fly far higher above their usual elevation and have a look around. It still took them 3 more almost aggravating hours before she spotted anything out of the ordinary again and another half to actually reach the distant blob. It was well into the afternoon by then and all four were quite weary of all the travelling. Thus, any sign of civilization was quite welcome.
What they found could barely be called a village, surrounding a small oasis. Which in itself was fascinating, given it was everyone’s first time actually seeing one of those. A staple of basically any book speaking of deserts, though it really looked more like a pond surrounded by sand than anything majestic. No real vegetation sprouted around it, just the hide tents.
The little settlement itself was in quite an uproar at their arrival as well. It was a small community, barely three dozen people gathering to look up at the mages, including four children of various ages. Their arrival from the skies, carrying a black umbrella as if woven from the night itself… earned them an uncomfortably worshipful welcome. At least that made asking questions simpler. For example, about the burned encampment - to which all of them professed ignorance. Not just of the cause but of the fact that such a settlement had even been there. After some describing the villagers went as far as to suggest it was likely just a caravan, for some reason traveling too far South from the ‘Holy Lands’, whatever that meant.
Those people were, surprisingly enough, monster hunters. A strange prospect given the fact that Irwyn had not seen a single living thing all day. Though they did have the look: Much of the communication had been done by three muscular giants among men - something close to leaders of the community. They were actually all in excellent physical shape, men and women. Not to mention that across the camp Irwyn began to notice the leather racks, drying out the thick hides of large creatures and such once it had been pointed out.
The community had scarcely known about the Federation at all when the topic came up but did have a way to reach the nearest major city. In fact, they suggested they might be able to send someone to go alongside them after dusk. That provoked another plethora of questions and Irwyn’s first proper taste of culture shock. Traveling through the day, it turned out, was suicidal for normal people. Even the strongest men would tire under the sun’s direct gaze over the hours, grow thirsty too fast. The hunters did not own any beasts of burden which turned things from difficult to unfeasible. The result was that the tribe was mostly active during nights - much like most of the dune monsters that they hunted. In fact, they mostly slept during the day like proper nocturnal creatures.
While all that was curious, Irwyn himself did want to sleep in the night. Everyone else shared that sentiment. That caused a bit of an argument between their group and the natives until one of the three head warriors, or whatever would be the best term, suggested that maybe it would be a ‘good idea to let them talk with the girl’. As it turned out, the guide they had been half offering was not even truly one of them but rather a guest that had been living alongside the village for several weeks.
The ‘girl’ turned out to be a petite and short woman perhaps twice the age of anyone in the Federation’s group. She wore light robes that covered her body, unlike the other locals who were so far barely a step above naked. She seemed also both incredibly annoyed that ‘no one had woken her up sooner’ while also incredibly fascinated by the newcomers.
“May the sands bless you, strangers! Call me Asemo,” she quickly recovered her cheer, introducing herself.
“Elizabeth,” the heiress took the lead, offering her hand which the woman stared at curiously. Realizing the difference in custom, Elizabeth retracted it and quickly introduced the rest of them to hide her embarrassment.
“The Duchy Federation? Truly fascinating!” the woman stared at them, slightly wide eyed. “I cannot remember the last time I have heard of someone coming from there.”
“The Lich War has been raging for months,” Elizabeth nodded. “Departures have been restricted.”
“Is it over now then?” Asemo executed a strangely stiff nod. “Even in peacetime, you scarcely hear of anyone leaving. I have been meaning to meet one of you for years!”
“Am sure we’ll have plenty time to speak, eh?” Waylan interjected. “But I could really use a rest for me legs.”
“To translate, we are a bit travel-worn,” Irwyn said. “We were told you might help us reach a proper city?”
“Ah, yes,” Asemo quickly confirmed. “I have already been meaning to leave with the next caravan that meets these good hunters. Going with you works just as well. I heard you might want to leave in the morning?”
“It would be ideal,” Elizabeth nodded. “Unless that is an issue? We will have no real troubles with the strains of sunlight.”
“No problem, no problem,” Asemo raised her right hand, making an unfamiliar sweeping gesture. “It is best I begin realigning my sleep anyway. A proper metropolitan prefers their rest in the soothing of darkness.”
“What were you even doing here?” Alice wondered. “You don’t strike me as a monster killer, right?”
“I have been updating the bestiary of local monsters given recent... events,” Asemo revealed. “A difficult but necessary obligation.”
“I would imagine those would have been long figured out?” Irwyn half-asked.
“Monsters shift over time,” Elizabeth shook her head. “Usually on the scale of decades but sometimes even in the short term. Or new creatures wind up simply manifesting in a region - the Tree of Life ever iterates and its roots run deeper than the limits of something as meager as ‘distance’.”
“It is a right issue, new creatures,” Asemo nodded “You say the Federation has a hypothesis on their origins?”
“Don’t you?” Elizabeth frowned. “The Tree of Life is hardly a secret. You strike me as scholarly.”
“Ah, I scarcely said anything besides my name, did I?” the woman paused. “My apologies, Asemo, second librarian of the City of Teraces – yet I have never heard of any such tree. Perhaps you possess much knowledge we lack. 50 years ago, many of our libraries were burned to ash when the Chosen last warred.”
“I feel like I am missing a lot of context,” Elizabeth shook her head. “Your local geopolitics are unfamiliar,” a sentence that made Waylan roll his eyes so intensely he almost tripped.
“Perhaps those will need a longer explanation,” Asemo agreed. “Tomorrow then, if we are to travel together. I need to pack all my belongings and catch some sleep. Are we in accord?”
“Yes, we leave tomorrow around dawn,” Elizabeth confirmed. “Whenever all of us are ready.”
“Excellent. I shall weep in anticipation tonight,” Asemo raised her hand, miming a circle next to her eye and then quickly left before anyone had time to process and question the words.
“Presumably a saying of some sort,” Irwyn guessed, looking at her back. It would certainly be strange if that had been literal.
“Yo, Irw, I just made a terrible discovery,” Waylan spoke gravely all of a sudden.
“What is the matter?” Irwyn asked as everyone turned to their tattooed man.
“They won’t know our idioms,” Waylan said, arms crossed, face full of mourning.
“So?” Alice did not seem to understand.
“So, they cannot tell if you ruin them,” Elizabeth did and could not help but chuckle. Irwyn followed suit.
“Ah, just you bait,” he frowned at them. “We will sea who has the last… blast.”
“Weak!” Irwyn did not miss the opportunity to fire back with a grin.
----------------------------------------
They had obviously brought tents with them for the journey. High-quality hide and even enchanted to some degree. The hunters certainly fawned over them even as their group struggled to figure out how to actually set said shelters up. Irwyn felt his cheeks almost turning red by the time they finally managed to erect their places of rest. It had taken over half an hour with most of that time being honestly wasted. Alice was the only one who had any experience with camping – so once she was done with her own, she had to go around, tear down the others’ futile attempts and re-build said tents from scratch. She said nothing but that mocking grin spoke volumes.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
It was closing up on sundown and the settlement was beginning to stir with more activity. It became quickly apparent that the locals were forming a hunting party of sorts, which certainly piqued the group’s interest. After some discussion, the four of them collectively decided to sneak around and watch from a distance. So, upon sundown, Elizabeth erected a veil of Void magic around them and they followed the villagers who would be none the wiser. Even good mages would struggle to catch wind of Elizabeth’s subtle magic, Irwyn knew that much very well from their duels, much less ordinary humans. They would be more than just invisible. The Void would erase even the slightest trace of their passing.
Their trip quickly proved to be amusingly novel. Irwyn, Waylan, and Alice could not see much more than shapes in the dim moonlight – true – but Elizabeth was more than happy to narrate, having no such issues. How could merely 'dark' contest the Void's daughter? What really mattered was how truly different it was from what they knew. The hunters started by surrounding a certain dune. Then one of the stepped forward holding what appeared to be a small basket half filled with insects. It was laid down on the sand with the bringer then carefully stepping away.
“There is a hole in the dune,” Elizabeth noted. “On a second look, it might not be proper sand all the way down. Sandstone? Perhaps a lair of some kind?”
“Or a way underground,” Alice added her own idea. “There could be an entire cave system for all we know if this material is hard enough. Not exactly sure how the ecosystem would work though.”
It did take a few minutes for something to emerge from beneath. A strange stunted creature with long claws and blind, degenerated eyes. It was no larger than a child in volume and not particularly fast. It began to drag itself cautiously out towards the perceived feast, twisted digging nails scrapping against sand in an unsteady shuffle.
That was when the hunters first struck. They used long thick bones fashioned into spears, each of them equipped with at least two as well as a good stockpile of similarly made bone javelins. Several of them lunged forward from where they had been crouching motionlessly not that far off. The creature immediately attempted to dart away but it was all too late, four stabs immobilized it. Right afterwards another warrior approached, took out a bone knife, then crippled each of the creature's legs.
They did not kill it. In fact, they just made sure it was completely immobile, then all of the hunters withdrew their spears and left the dying thing to bleed out as it voicelessly squealed. There was a reason for that, of course. Blood poured down into the sand and then presumably through it. Below where it attracted bigger predators. It still took a few more minutes before the real prey actually emerged - Alice giving a second of early warning as she felt the ground shift. Because when it did it was not from the small tunnel, rather, it burst out from beneath the sands themselves, causing the grains to erupt skyward as it immediately captured the already dying creature.
It looked nothing like any animal or monster Irwyn had heard of. At its front were dozens upon dozens of small appendages - ending in not quite claws but close enough, more like ivorty scoops, scraping the sand aside with ease. That presumably allowed it to burrow throughout the environment but also emerge on the surface. Of course, that did not explain its speed. That was caused by thousands of tiny limbs asymmetrically sprouting from its torso. Almost like an incredibly grotesque centipede, except it was not an insectile creature with a carapace - there was proper thick hide covering its body instead.
The hunters did not hesitate a moment to attack it. A small storm of the bone javelins hit it first while it was wrangling its meal to the presumed mouth - Elizabeth could not see beneath all the little limbs from where they stood as she narrated the situation. Surprisingly enough, most of the projectiles pierced, sticking out of smaller but ugly wounds. The monster reeled, finally noticing its adversaries when they were already upon it.
There was something fascinating to be found in that struggle, even if Irwyn could only see the shapes of it. It was so small yet also brutally primal in a way that made his blood heat up with the slightest hint of battle thirst even from so far away. Sure, he could have killed everyone and the monster with one spell but that was not what he took from it. Rather, he focused on the struggle itself, because even enough battle was just that - even. It mattered less to the spectacle how much power each side actually possessed when they were matched.
Well, not quite equal, all things considered. Perhaps if the battle was held in an open field the strange monster might have held the advantage. But it had walked straight into an ambush, starting off surrounded and surprised. The hunters attacked it in waves of five, spaced around in a loose circle. They would each rush in, sticking a long bone spear into the creature's body with all their momentum, then back away, giving way for their tribesman while they readied their next spear.
The monster did not seem the most adapted for direct battle either. All the threat it could pose at first was reaching with those digging hands at the front of its body - it didn’t really seem to have a proper head. That could only dissuade one attack at a time though, earning four more spears. In less than a minute it was riddled with dozens. Seemingly beginning to take the attackers seriously, it finally unborrowed fully. The full size of the creature was much larger than Irwyn had thought. Elizabeth estimated five meters long, crawling on the desert sands with its incredibly short but numerous appendages. It was clear that it was not adapted to fighting on the surface, though it still tried, struggling with limited mobility.
A few more rounds of charges were executed while the creature struggled to scare away the attackers with its hands’ limited reach. Then Elizabeth exclaimed at something unexpected: The back of the creature - not quite a tail, more like the other end of a monotonous torso - sprung upwards towards one of the hunters behind it. At that point dozens of long, retractable spikes suddenly sprung forth from within, trying to gore the nearest attacker with a deadly sweep.
And by speed alone the monster might have. Except the hunters had been clearly expecting just that kind of an attack and both the men approaching to attack from behind backed off as soon as soon as the monster’s back end so much as twitched towards them. That meant that neither was so much as grazed. Without the element of surprise, the pseudo-tail remained threatening, of course, but it could only slow the attackers down. This was clearly not the first time they had hunted a creature like it because the villagers were perfectly coordinated in baiting the spikes to attack one while two others impaled the monster with another charge.
It did not take the creature much longer to realize that it was, indeed, losing far too much blood for comfort. Thick, green ichor rather than blood, actually, according to Elizabeth’s far superior dark vision. Either way, riddled with dozens of spears, the monster decided to flee. It put its head down towards the ground and began to desperately burrow downwards.
The spears stopped it.
It was impaled in so many places that the thick bone weapons got stuck on the sand, stopping it from digging any deeper than the first few centimeters. Embedded deep in its hide, the monster would either need to break those thick bone spears or let them tear more of its flesh just for a bit more give. Either in ignorance or desperation, it still tried. The leather proved to be less resilient among the two materials.
Seeing it retreating, the hunters also did not hesitate. Their lunges were quickly aimed lower, as close to the sand as possible. That meant that more and more spears were stopping it from diving while the monster tore apart chunks of its own flesh for each centimeter of depth. It did not take long for the accumulating weapons to almost look like the petals of a truly grotesque flower.
By then, its flailing was growing weaker. It had not made it deeper than 30 or so centimeters, Elizabeth guessed, and while its tail was still swiping from side to side, it did so blindly. Most of the monster’s body, riddled with wounds, was stuck above ground, losing strength with each passing moment.
The hunters did not hesitate, an entire group of them finding a moment to firmly grab onto the spears near the back of the monster’s body and forcing the ending full of extended spikes to stop moving. More of them approached to hold the spears stopping it from burrowing - thus also preventing the monster from trying to go back above. A few began to systematically cripple the creature's many tiny legs, especially those it was still standing on to further nullify its mobility.
Then the gatherers finally approached. There have been few women actually participating in the hunt at close range, mostly relegated to the initial salvo of javelins or for helping with switching out new spears. But once it was restrained, they approached with, surprisingly enough, jars. Glass jars which they were quickly using to gather up the blood - green ichor - leaking from the many wounds. It took at least ten more minutes before the creature stopped twitching. When it did, the hunters pulled the rest of the corpse out of the ground and the entire community began to collectively butcher it with long bone knives. There was a lot of meat and leather to go through, even though much of the latter would have holes.
“Gross,” Waylan grimaced. “No way they eat that, right?”
“Why not?” Elizabeth glanced sideways at him, still mostly focused on the scene.
“It literally has green blood. It has to be venom,” Waylan said, taking a moment to wink at Irwyn and let him know he used the wrong word on purpose. Irwyn intently ignored it.
“That is just a misconception,” Elizabeth shook her head. “Almost no monsters actually have poisonous flesh. Basically only those literally living in toxic environments would develop such traits most of the time.”
“Goes against my gut,” Waylan grunted, still disagreeing.
“It only makes sense,” Alice commented. “Monsters were explicitly created for their parts to be useful.”
“First time hearing that,” Waylan stared.
“That’s why they don’t have Souls,” Irwyn added. “You would have if you ever actually read the Book of the Name. Parios created monsters to both challenge the species of the universe as well as provide the resources for their growth.”
“A lot of people forget that,” Elizabeth also nodded. “Many think monsters come from Life and biology, probably because the Tree of Life creates countless monster species in its pursuit of change - and then spreads them around. But make no mistake, monsters are originally of Essence and can merely take the form of any other element. The less magical ones usually do require mostly functional biology and sustenance - like that one over there - but more powerful monsters might not necessarily have even a trace of the Life element in them.”
“I get lectured even when watchin’ a hunt,” Waylan grumbled though with no heat behind it. “Actually, won’t all the blood attract more monsters?”
“No,” Alice disagreed. “Not if these… I have no idea what to call them…”
“Leatherpedes,” Irwyn offered.
“Legg-ion,” Waylan countered.
“I am sure they have an official name,” Elizabeth did not add her own ideas to the pool.
“Whatever,” Alice shook her head. “If these monsters are the most dangerous predator in these parts - or at least near the surface - nothing else will emerge after them. In fact, other monsters are much more likely to run if they smell the ichor of something that usually hunts them.”
“Do we want to stand around for the whole butchery,” Irwyn asked after a moment. “I can’t see much anyway.”
“Does it have bones?” Waylan decided to ask.
“I think it does,” Elizabeth nodded. “But shorter ones for those legs. Might suffice for the throwing weapons, I don’t see anything large enough for the spears. Nor a spine. But no, we can go, the action seems to be over.”
“It was fun but a bit anticlimactic,” Alice commented as they tuned around to leave. And finally go to sleep.
“Hey, there is one positive,” Irwyn smiled, grinning at Waylan. “I am pretty sure we will have fresh steak for breakfast. Perhaps with some green blood sauce?”
“Bleh,” their sneak gave him his dirtiest stare.