The ride to Sinnwell was bumpy, but Hara expected no less from a last minute ride over to the bane of Ignotas' existence.
Five trucks were driving in a line, all of them filled with tired, exhausted, and annoyed Ignotants, Hara already dreaded getting off before Sinnwell even came into view.
Having woken up a good hour into the three hour trip to Sinnwell, the woman had already started making plans in her head, she knew going in there unprepared, mentally and physically, would end in a disaster as not one of them would be able to, or even bother to, keep their tempers in check and not punch the first smug Sinnwell dweller they saw and interacted with.
She already wanted to turn back, but the Chief had given her a task, and she wasn't going back until she completed it to the best of her ability.
The road was speckled in leaves that changed from lush green to a colourful mix of yellows, browns, and oranges.
Hara leaned back against the leather seat in exhaustion as the radio in the truck crackled to life.
"Another hour down the road, does anybody want to switch drivers?" Max croaked over the line, the rugged man in his fiftys' sounding as tired as she felt as he spoke, Hara glanced at her driver and saw him shake his head, "I'm fine, I've got coffee to last me a day." He grinned at her and gestured to the filled and splashing cup secured in a cup holder.
Hara nodded and gave a mental command to her beast,
Lyth glanced up at her master and nodded, the task no challenge for an animal that could standstill for hours on end to wait for its prey to come to it.
There was a bit of chatter over the line as the trucks came to a halt so that two trucks could change drivers.
They were all tired, and they'd rather stop and change the tired drivers out before they had an accident, they might be in a hurry, but that hurry was not to die.
"I swear to god, if I find the half-gutted swine that fucked this up for us, I'll skin him and dunk him in boiling. salt. water." One of the men cursed and Hara bit back a chuckle, she could get behind that thought.
She leaned out of the rolled down window, using her elbow to steady herself as she did so, "That's pretty tame, ain't it, I'd feed their severed limbs to "The Roaches", and make them watch." Hara gave a vengeful chuckle and watched as another guy rolled down the window.
"Savage, I like it, why don't we drown what's left of them in their "Mudslide"? "
"Sounds great, honestly, we can leave the corpses to rot in Sry, or Emerald, heard it can get nasty.~" One of the few women chirped while climbing into the driver's seat.
Hara broke out in delighted laughter, she was pretty sure she only found this so funny because of her fatigue, but really, it could have been Lyths' emotions mixing with her own.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Max's voice sounded over the radio, "Enough planning murder, get back in the cars, we have shit to do and I'd like to go to sleep sometime today." He grumbled and the murder plans were pushed to the backburner.
The driver next to her lost his smile a few minutes into the drive and stared at the forester next to him before speaking.
"You think we can find something to incriminate Sinnwell for that "mudslide"? "
"Depends, if they were stupid about it, or in too much of a hurry to clean up after, maybe." She spoke, it wasn't really hard to cause a small scale mudslide, especially with their terrain, but that didn't mean that there were no tools and planning needed.
"What do you mean?" Her driver asked, one hand on the wheel, the other holding his coffee as he sipped from it.
"They shouldn't have had much time to cause the mudslide, and there are a few quick ways to do it, but they do leave some evidence behind, although I'm sure they flooded the area again to make it look more natural, maybe loosen the soil and dirt with shovels, we'll have to see."
"I hope we can get them this time, they are getting more and more brazen in their actions against us, honestly, after this, I'm afraid they won't stop at indirectly causing us harm." He frowned and Hara stilled, eyes narrowed and lips pursed.
Lyth let out a furious pulse of emotion, mimicking the anger her partner felt, "You're right." Hara answered coldly, "If it comes to it, we won't stop at it either." Her voice was cold and fury pulsed in her veins as she replied.
The man next to her nodded, "We'll do what we need to do." He huffed and relaxed his grip on the steering wheel, leaning back and glancing at Hara.
"Did you know, there's a saying, a code- you could say, that's been passed down for generations in Ignota."
The ravenette shook her head, she had moved to Ignota when she was a young teen and although she had done her best to make Ignota her home, there were still things she didn't know.
He grinned at her, and she felt that it resembled a shark.
"Ignota means "unknown", and our saying follows that." His grin faded into a smug smile.
"
"<-for the unknown protects those within.>" The man next to Hara smiled again, this time it was warm and soothing.
"We don't kiss and tell, Hara, you might not have been born here, but you sure as hell belongs with us, and you sure as hell are an Unknown, just like the rest of us."
The woman in the passenger seat smiled and hugged her beast closer, letting Lyth chirp as the beast became a shield to hide her partner as she blushed.
"That's... that's good to hear." She whispered, but he heard her.
He laughed, "It fits, doesn't it? And I'll say, just between the two of us. If need be, no one from Ignota will sit by idly after Sinnwell has gotten this cocky and malicious, the only difference between us will be how far we go in our revenge."
"... even if it's not exactly legal?" Hara asked quietly.
The driver glanced at her and snorted, repeating, "The only difference between us will be how far we go."
The driver took a breath as he narrowed his eyes, focused on the road.
"Kid, Ignota has been standing on its own feet for generations, and Sinnwell has been a pain in our ass for nearly as long, we don't do "police" and "justice" here like they do in the cities and government controlled areas, we've been taking care of ourselves since the founding of Ignota, and that's been generations ago, when beheading people was still a norm." He told her.
"We might have gotten more merciful as the generations passed and laws became a thing, but we've always been on our own out here, if the law fails us, we take it into our own hands and make sure what we do stays "Unknown" for the rest of the world."
"