The hooves of the giant northern Aurox fell like boulders, each step a seismic event, each leap shaking the snow-laden branches as if the forest itself was flinching. With a great, noisy inhale, the beast sent a plume of steam from her vast, black nostrils, like some kind of ancient locomotive that had traded tracks for the snowy wilds. Her eyes, red and smoldering with irritation, peered from beneath a tangled thatch of fur, scanning the world as if daring it to try something—anything, really. Something had set her off, and whatever it was, it had clearly made a tactical error. She snorted, pawed at the snow like a battering ram testing its range, and then let out a roar that shook the ice off nearby trees and probably sent sensible creatures scurrying for cover.
Now, when you think of the creatures that dwell in the Andronian foothills—those quiet, sensible sorts that know their place in the food chain—the Aurox wasn’t one of them. Wolves, bears, snow leopards… they'd all rather wrestle with an avalanche than go head-to-head with an Aurox, let alone a whole herd of them. Because the Aurox didn’t just live in the mountains—they were the mountains, wrapped in shaggy fur and an attitude problem. You didn’t mess with them. If you were hungry enough, and let’s say winter had really outdone itself this year, you might—might—try snatching a calf. But, even then, that was more of a "last meal" scenario, and frankly, most predators preferred the less suicidal option of hunting a deer or, you know, one of their own kind. As for this Aurox? She was having one of those moods, the kind that made her about as approachable as a rabid thunderstorm, and twice as dangerous.
In short, hunting Aurox was not so much a sport as an elaborate way of suggesting to the gods that one’s life had been far too comfortable of late.
Unless you were incredibly stupid or incredibly hungry. Of which, our hero was both.
The roar dwindled away like thunder after a storm, though the storm itself—an enormous, muscle-bound creature under a pelt as brown as the forest floor and sparkling with frost like a very irritable Christmas tree—wasn’t finished. She stood there, sides heaving, glaring at the world with all the intensity of someone who's just realized they’re the biggest, meanest thing around and still feels something amiss. Her breath came out in great, hoarse gusts that rattled the air itself. Her massive head swung left, then right, as her hooves dug into the snow with all the grace of a wrecking ball. She knew something was out there. It wasn’t bear, leopard, or wolf, but something altogether more alarming—the scent was unmistakably human. And she hated it.
Still, nothing moved. Not a branch in the trees, not a trickle of snow from the slope. The forest, it seemed, was holding its breath. No path disturbed, no snowball playfully rolling down as if Nature herself had decided to step aside and say, ‘You’re on your own.’
The Aurox snorted once more, and launched herself forward. Instinct was now in the driver's seat, and it wasn’t the type to bother with safety protocols. Fear of death? Not likely! Instinct was here to win.
The trees, however, had other plans. As she charged ahead, their snowy branches bent under the weight and collapsed in a small avalanche. But amongst the tumbling white lumps, there was one that wasn’t exactly your standard-issue snowball.
The Aurox jerked as it fell upon her nape, that instinct which had been so brave just moments ago suddenly realizing it had forgotten to check for airborne ambushes. She tried to pivot, but ice is notoriously bad at forgiving mistakes, and her hooves slipped. Down she went, her front leg snapping with a sickening crack that echoed far more than she would've liked. She tumbled in slow, heavy motion, but not before raising her thick neck—almost as if to say, ‘If I’m going down, at least I’ll look dramatic doing it’—to meet the inevitable.
When she hit the snow, it was surprisingly quiet, like a mountain politely collapsing into a cloud of white. The whole grove shuddered as if it had been waiting for this very moment, releasing a curtain of snowflakes, almost like it was applauding. The Aurox, now resembling something halfway between a boulder and a very disappointed hill, lay still for a moment. Except this boulder had a large wound to its leg.
She roared again, but this time it wasn’t a ‘Get off my land’ roar; it was more of a ‘That really, really hurt’ roar. Pain, fury, and a sense of profound unfairness reverberated through the foothills, triggering an avalanche somewhere in the distance that was probably very surprised to be involved in this situation at all. The Aurox struggled to rise, wobbling on her broken leg, steam hissing from her mouth and instantly freezing into a slick layer of ice as if the very ground had decided to mock her.
This was no longer a place of trees and snow. This was a battleground, and there was a hunter now, appearing exactly on cue, which is always a little unsettling when you’re on the wrong side of the plot.
Out of the snow rose a figure, pale and blurry, like a winter solstice decoration that got a little too enthusiastic about blending in. It shimmered, swayed, and then, in a rather inconvenient bit of reality, turned into a man. A boy really, but the Aurox wasn’t going to split hairs about something that looked more like a mythical snow beast more than an actual Andronian hunter.
Despite her leg screaming at her to just give it up already, she stared down the hunter. And for one, painful moment, both stood still—the beast and the boy—locked in a strange sort of dance, neither one entirely sure who would lead.
The hunter closed the distance in several powerful bounds, the kind that would make an Andronian seem as if they’d signed an unspoken agreement with gravity to only acknowledge its existence in passing. In his raised hand, a training sword gleamed ominously, and not in the way of a well-polished heirloom. No, this gleam had more of a ‘I’m going to introduce you to the pointy end’ feel about it.
The queen—yes, that’s what she was, all muscle, fur, and dignity wrapped up in several tonnes of angry bovine determination—charged with a force that could flatten kingdoms (or, at the very least, a moderately-sized tavern). She lowered her head with a menacing bellow, though truth be told, the sound had lost some of its usual vigour thanks to the unpleasant business of bleeding profusely. Wounds have a nasty habit of doing that.
The hunter was no fool. He sidestepped in a way that suggested he’d done this sort of thing before, moving toward her wounded leg and allowing the charging mountain of rage to sail past him. With a practiced twist, he brought the sword down toward her neck. It nearly flew out of his hands—truth be told, this part of the job wasn’t as glamorous as the bards made it sound—but with a second, far less dramatic (but considerably more effective) strike, he managed to lop off her hind leg at the hoof. The queen staggered, letting out a noise that definitely wasn’t regal.
For the second time that day, the mighty Aurox queen found herself hitting the ground, this time in a heap. She collapsed against the forked tree that had wounded her, snapping it clean in two. The sword twisted out of the hunter’s grip, and he tumbled unceremoniously into a lurking predatory snowdrift, a feat of athleticism that would likely never be immortalized in song. He scrambled out just in time to avoid being flattened by the tree’s final, vengeful thud, shaking snow off like a snow leopard that had very nearly embarrassed itself.
The queen, now thoroughly fed up with the proceedings, kicked out in one last attempt to send her tormentor into next week. Instead, he grabbed a fistful of fur with one hand, and hauled himself up onto her, retrieving his sword.
With a final growl of exertion, he leaped onto her back and threw all his weight into the strike. The grove filled with a plaintive moo—yes, moo, because even the most ferocious Aurox is still technically a cow—and that quickly gave way to something that sounded like a drain in desperate need of a plumber. The blade found its mark, and with a convulsive twitch, the Aurox threw him off. Unfortunately for the queen, the sword didn’t come with him, and the crackling of the blade’s energy echoed through the snow as her final breath left her.
The hunter stood, shook himself off, and, because life was never simple, climbed back onto the now-lifeless beast, grabbed the the blade still buried in her, and pulled. There was a sound that could only be described as ‘squelchy,’ and a spray of blood that turned the nearby snow into something reminiscent of an abstract painting. He wiped the blade on the steaming hide, took a moment to compose himself, and spat out blood with an air of mild indifference.
He turned back to the Aurox, eyeing her massive carcass with the kind of look that said, ‘This is going to take a while.’
And so it did. The next several hours were filled with the sound of ax meeting flesh, of bone splintering, and of snow being thoroughly ruined by the hot, sticky mess that followed. Eventually, the hunter stood over the severed hind leg, his work done, surrounded by a rather unpleasant scene. The snow had melted into a blood-soaked slush, and beneath his feet, there was a sight that no self-respecting person would want to step in.
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But hey, at least the job was done.
The man, stripped to the waist in the freezing cold, stood over the fresh carcass of an Aurox, which is essentially what you get when a bull and a boulder have an argument and the bull wins.
The surrounding foothills reeked of blood and fresh kill, and there had been a roar, a big one—a sort of ‘I am very cross and will eat your face’ roar—echoing not too long ago. But the man, undisturbed by this minor detail, worked at his own unhurried pace, the sort of pace that suggests either supreme confidence or a complete disregard for survival, and it's hard to tell which is worse.
The man was all business. With a flick of his wrist, out came a knife, and he began slicing away at the Aurox hide with the precision of someone who’s done this sort of thing before, but without the flair of someone who enjoys it.
Straps of hide became a bag, a quick flick from behind his boot produced a clay bottle, he was dousing the bag with something liquid and probably not legal. The bottle was then summarily chucked into a snowdrift, its job done.
His attention returned to the Aurox, or rather, to the foul-smelling glands buried inside the thing. A couple of quick cuts and the scent glands were in his hand, the sort of prize no one in their right mind would be fighting him for. With a swift motion, he stuffed them into the newly made bag, tied it tight. Even the man, unflinching in the face of his gruesome task, recoiled at the stench, sneezing and grimacing as he gathered his gear and prepared to leave the rest for the local scavengers, who presumably had stronger stomachs than him.
A quick whistle summoned a skimmer, the sort that looked like it’d be more at home on a drier and altogether flatter planet, but apparently had a taste for adventure.
The man, for his part, gave the hull of the skimmer a pat, removed his fur hat and gazed off into the setting sun like he was in a particularly dramatic painting.
The skimmer door opened, and a younger boy looked up at him.
“And that,” he shouted, shaking the bag like someone might shake a fistful of dice before ruining someone’s evening, “is how you take down an Aurox!”
Denor looked up from the datapad in which he had entered a list of names, names of people he sought with a vengeance. “Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Oh for the love of Tamet!”
With that, Ledo leapt into the skimmer, cuffed his son around the ear, cast one last meaningful glance at the forest, the sky, and whatever else happened to be within view, and tapped out a series of commands that sent the vehicle into action. They surged forward, not one of them looking back. Ledo’s ice-green eyes were fixed ahead, his jaw clenched so tightly you could practically hear his cheekbones squeak.
All that effort, and Denor hadn’t even been watching.
In that moment, if anyone had been watching—and let’s be honest, no one sensible was—he could have been mistaken for the Wild Hunter himself, the sort of figure who shows up at the end of the world to announce it’s time to pack it in and go home.
To Denor though, it was just Ledo, and a Ledo in his default state: Angry at him for some reason.
***
The former gunsmith, whose stress-induced wrinkles had all but taken up a permanent residence on his face, stood before Hevath, who had long since been given his one-way ticket to the afterlife, but had somehow missed the carriage. Turns out he had hid. Under some snow. The inexplicably alive elder’s back was hunched as if he'd spent the last century trying to talk to the ground, and he leaned heavily on young Denor and Charan, the last solid things left in this crumbling equation. Together with Gella, they were the only survivors of a small village north of New Titania, the others having gone off to Tamet's hall to drink, feast, and occasionally check the time to make sure the living were still dawdling about.
"The three of you will handle the rest," he said, in that tone men of a certain age use when they’re not asking for your opinion.
"Less talk, Hevath. We’ve brought back what you required, now let’s get this over with before you keel over from age."
“Aye,” mumbled the old man, whose conversational skills had been the stuff of legend. A very long-winded and winding legend. "Bring me a bag then, before I die empty-handed."
Ledo left the cave without a word and soon returned with two rather well-worn leather bags, tossing them onto the floor with all the grace of someone who’s past the point of caring. The bags lay by the last surviving portable heater, which was close to dying repeatedly too. The old man gave it a kick, which did little more than remind him his knees were older than his stubbornness, and shuffled deeper into the cave. There, a canopy of faded leopard skin hung, once proud and shiny but now a lot worse for wear. He yanked it aside and squinted into the gloom.
"So the skimmer you salvaged worked then?" he asked, in that gruff tone people use when they already know the answer but are too old to care if they’re annoying.
“How do you think we got here and back so fast if it didn’t?” grumbled Ledo, who was busy squatting by a pot on the heater and stirring something that looked like it belonged in a potion shop, not a kitchen. "Now get the other ingredients quickly before this goes bad."
The old man vanished behind the skin curtain again, reappearing moments later with three reindeer, who, upon reflection, looked rather insulted to be included in this particular adventure. Andronians, after all, weren’t big on reindeer—too stubborn, a bit like trying to ride a particularly opinionated boulder. But today’s mission demanded them, as they only had one skimmer and the Trunians could detect the energy signature, and dogs were just too… domestic.
The deer, having caught a whiff of the ominous bags, reared up, clearly sharing the same sentiment about the smell as the rest of the cave’s occupants. Ledo cursed under his breath, handed the pot to Hevath, and rushed over to assist the old man in the universal struggle of trying to calm down something large, annoyed, and with far too fragile a temperament.
So just like his ex-wife then.
Gella, for her part, took this moment to scrub her face with snow, as one does when there’s a ritual on the horizon. She scooped up some of the bluish goop from the pot and smeared it on her right cheek and forehead, her eyes gleaming with a light that could only be described as "mildly unhinged." The old man, not to be outdone, applied the bizarre mixture to his own wrinkled visage while Denor and Ledo, now apparently in charge of reindeer herding, led the jittery animals out of the cave. His turn had come to join the face-painting party, and soon they stood, marked by the rapidly darkening clay and ready to face whatever madness lay ahead.
Bags in hand, they left the cave without so much as a backward glance. The reindeer, perhaps sensing they had signed up for a quest well above their pay grade, pawed nervously at the snow, their wide eyes betraying their unease at the grim burdens strapped to their riders.
“The main thing,” Hevath said, with all the authority of someone who had, quite literally, nothing left to lose, “is not to let the Aurox catch up before you’ve broken into their camp. Light the fire as soon as you see the herd. We’ll begin together.”
Unfortunately for the conversation, Ledo had dropped into a fighting stance and raised his blaster at the entrance.
A Gurruk had appeared outside the cave, leaning against the wall and smiling at them, savouring the sight for all its worth.
Denor’s hand unconsciously flew up to his own face. “Ghurmain!”
Ledo raised an eyebrow. “This is the Gurruk you were babbling about? You mean that story you told us wasn’t a fever dream?”
Charan stared at the monster with distrust. “You need to have better taste in friends.”
Denor looked at him. “You’re my friend, Charan.”
The boy grunted. “My point still stands.”
Ghurmain squinted at Denor’s appearance. And then he laughed. A great, rumbling wet laugh that echoed off the walls and shook the icicles loose from the ceiling.
"You!" Ghurmain said, pointing with one enormous, slightly-too-fingerish finger. "What is this? Did you plan to mock me with your tiny Gurruk face?"
Denor blinked. "I’m not a Gurruk, Ghurmain. I’m Denor. Denor Kara."
“He means your face paint, idiot.” Ledo helpfully supplied, his hand not leaving the trigger of his blaster.
"A painted face!" Ghurmain chortled, unimpressed at the weapon, his laugh bouncing around the cave like a boulder on a downhill run. "And here I thought I was looking into a very small mirror."
Denor, despite his rising panic, couldn’t help but grin. Ghurmain wasn’t going to take this personally, was he? Ledo wasn’t going to shoot the Gurruk, was he? That would be awfully inconvenient.
The Gurruk peered closer, his massive nose hovering just above Denor’s head. "Hmph. Not bad. But you missed a bit. Just there, under your chin."
Denor's hand shot to his chin, wiping at the non-existent smudge. "Ah, well, you know, in this cold it’s hard to keep a steady hand. Anyway! The reindeer. If you don’t mind, I’d like to… you know… get them out of here."
The Gurruk looked past Denor to the spooked herd that didn’t approve of his sudden appearance. "Reindeer? They look very... stupid."
Denor sighed. "Yes. Yes, they do. But they're mine, and I've got to lead them back out before they kick the portable heater or make a mess on the floor.”
“Actually Denor,” Gella called out, “we were more worried you would do that.”
“But why reindeer? It is hardly a trustworthy steed,” the Gurruk asked.
Denor shrugged. “Not sure why. Come on, you antlered idiots!”
“We have a plan,” Ledo muttered, looking back into the cave at Hevath, who was wordlessly staring daggers at the beast.
The reindeer, hearing the familiar tone of exasperation in Denor’s voice, began to shuffle towards the exit. Ghurmain stepped aside, though he couldn’t resist one last quip.
"You know," the Gurruk said, smirking, "if you ever want to make the paint permanent, I can show you how."
Ledo forced a chuckle. "Sure, Gurruk, we’ll keep that in mind. Thanks for the tip. But I think the less we look like you the better.”
As Denor led his herd out of the cave, the snow swirling gently around them, he couldn’t help but glance back over his shoulder. Ghurmain stood there, still grinning, waving a casual goodbye as he watched them mount the beasts.
And with that, the Andronians kicked their reluctant reindeer into motion and galloped off in different directions—each one with a mind full of nothing but revenge, and a sky full of snow waiting to swallow them whole.
“I know your plan, fools,” Ghurmain muttered into the wind. “It will take more than that.”