The dragon’s rotten lips parted, a fetid cloud of swamp gas leaking from the beast’s depths. “So,” the monster spoke, “you’ve come to kill me, haven’t you?”
Vic opened her mouth in shock before she could collect her wits. “I’m here for the bullet,” she said at last, reaching out a hand to steady herself against a tree.
“Yes, then,” the dragon slowly uncoiled, its head snaking forward. “Well, I’m not interested in fighting today, so I suppose I’ll just let you have it.”
“What?” Vic could scarcely believe it. Was the dragon being honest? She certainly wasn’t feeling up for a fight, much less with a dragon and without her rifle. Would it really be that easy?
The dragon hissed, sending a spray of burning liquid over Vic’s face. “You heard me. I’m going to give you one of the six legendary bullets. You can pluck it straight from my forehead and I won’t even eat you for your trouble. How does that sound?”
The way was dark and cold. A rusted lantern with a small slosh of ancient oil provided enough light to see by and not much else. The sound of dripping water echoed through the depths. The darkness was unyielding, drawing Vic further and further away from the light. She had never ventured into the caves and abandoned mines of the Borderlands; the monsters that roamed the land above were bad enough, and there was little of worth in the dark underground. It was all Vic could do to not shiver.
The passages twisted and wound across each other like writhing snakes. Were it not for Vic’s compass, she would have been completely lost.
No, not completely. Every once in a while, the pull of the fifth bullet dragged at her stomach, tugging her down this tunnel or that. She was hunting on instinct now, navigating the maze of tunnels with little more than hope spurring her on.
At long last, a faint glimmer of natural light shone through the darkness. She crept forward, ducking through the small passage until she reached a large fissure in the rock, stretching up to the surface and down deeper into the earth.
The lake water looked cold, but the singer payed it no mind.
The rising sun was slowly warming the nighttime air, the first piercing rays striking the singer full in the face, but it paid no mind to the sun either. It’s eyes had long since rotted away to a shrivled milky white. Loose teeth rattled in its skull as its head fell from side to side, a sound that was half a moan and half a hymn drifting across the gently rippling lake.
Whoever they were, they died years ago. Now, all they were was a fountain of suffering that drew the living and trapped them in their own nightmares. There were ten of them, at least. They rocked back and forth, their eyes squeezed tight, their faces frozen masks of pain, fear, and despair.
Vic rubbed her mouth as she studied the scene from her hiding spot. It would be hard to get everyone away from the monster without being seen, but the walking dead were harder to kill than most. Besides, she was running low on supplies and still had to get the ten people back home.
Humans didn’t last long in the Borderlands. The air was bad, it made you sick. Monsters hunted silently, and claimed their pray with sudden and clear fierceness. The few who survived for any length of time, did so because of either extensive training or a guide who had the same, and they rarely stayed longer than a week before returning to the safety of civilization.
Vic opened her pack and pulled out the last of her herbs. Surely, she had to have something useful that could keep the weathered zombie busy while she fled with its captives.
“Ah!” The sands settled for only a moment. “Brave and bold! There is little you could offer us, child. We who flit through the air know all things that the air touches. We hear all things whispered and see all things seen.”
Vic smiled. Her mother had called it a curse; the elementals had great power but cared for nothing. All the secrets they knew, and they didn’t want for any of them. “Then you know where the legendary bullets lie?”
“Hmm…” The air seemed to think, though it had no mind to think with. “We know of one. I lies buried deep in this very desert.”
Vic’s heart skipped a beat. “Can you tell me where? Show me where it’s buried?”
The airy sprite swung back and forth, a windy kind of childish smile. “Why should we do that?”
Vic took a slow breath. She had never dealt with an elemental directly before, but she had listed to plenty of her elders describe their own dealings. She had come prepared.
“I’ll race you.”
Vic checked the map. “Shit.”
The southern wetlands were not the best mapped areas in the Borderlands. The marshes and soggy soil kept most people away, and there were plenty of monsters who hunted and scavenged in the land. Fewer places were less hospitable; it was too easy to lose your way only to find yourself drawn down to a watery grave by a misplaced foot. Add to this the fact that the wetlands were more likely than others to shift and change, and maps were difficult to make and rarely useful for any length of time.
Ironically, there were many reasons for Hunters to visit the wetlands; herbs of all kinds grew here, special ingredients of an arcane nature. Roots and barks, fresh leaves and buds from flowers, even certain kinds of mud were useful. It took a keen eye and a sharp mind to harvest the rarest, and a few were known only to the Monster Hunters. The chance of collecting these herbs alone was reason enough to risk a muddy grave.
Of course, there used to be people whose job it was to forage for the vital and rare ingredients, people who knew the land and its treacheries. Now, there was only Vic, and she was having a hard time of it.
Vic’s arm swung before she realized what she was doing. The silver blade dug deep into the side of the dry-one’s skull, peeling the parchment-like skin off the bone.
The dry-one shrieked, stepping backwards as the clawed hands flailed at Vic’s skin. She yanked the dagger free, ducking under the clawing limbs as she drove the knife towards the monster’s chest.
The corpse lurched aside again, the silver knife gouging a chunk out of its chest. Dry cloth and thin leather flapped around Vic’s ears and face as the glowing blue flames licked her face.
“Victoria, it must be you. I wish I could say it was a pleasure.”
Vic shoved the corpse hard, pushing herself away from the teeth and claws. She rolled back on the ground before coming up into a crouch, knife at the ready. Her heart was beating like mad, her conscious mind was in a panic. How could he be here?
“Here’s the last of it,” Petra grunted as she set the large sack of salt on the bar.
Vic glanced up as she finished filling her last casing. “Good. That’ll be plenty. You sure you don’t mind?”
“Not getting much use for it now,” she shrugged. “And no one’s comin’ in again if you don’t lick this problem right quick.”
Vic sealed the cartridge with a wad of paper. “Well, I ain’t goin’ to promise I’ll win. Never fought a dry-one before.”
“What’s that?”
Vic sighed as she slipped two prepared cartridges into Petra’s shotgun. “The deserts, the windy places of the Borderlands…they do something to the dead, but they can do something to the living too. You get thirsty, even if you have water. You start losing things; your self, your skin, your thoughts…eventually, all that’s left is hate.”
Lakeside was a quiet town; only a few families, fewer children. Times were generally hard for the town, but they had always been so. The eldest Hunters had never known Lakeside to be full of anything but struggle and hard living, even before Old Splitfoot had staked his claim. The hard life had made the people of Lakeside wary, but through determined stubbornness, Lakeside had survived even in the Borderlands.
They weren’t the only town that survived — Boone’s Rest and Prudence both managed to scrape together a living, and Cloudy Vale was almost thriving — but the price had been high; high enough that Cloudy Vale was still paying, and paying hard. Lakeside was not only proof that survival was possible, but without making unwise deals.
The town had one tavern, and it wasn’t a good one. Lakeside couldn’t afford to stock their larders with food or drink from other towns, and the local still was the only source of moonshine. The owner of the tavern, Petra, tried her best to keep the barrels stocked, but she could only do so much.
Nevertheless, Vic knew better than most that every little bit helped, so she pushed the tavern doors open on their rusty hinges.
The tavern was empty. Dust covered the tables.
There were few people in the world who remembered the Borderlands before Old Splitfoot staked his claim: legends of forests free of monsters, deserts without the wailing dead, and plains full of fresh water and dancing deer, sleeping field-mice and singing birds.
The true telling of it was kept by the Grand Order of Monster Hunters in books and journals held as sacred, to be protected above all else. It was a holy memory — there was a time before Old Splitfoot.
Now, the plains were dangerous.
The worst danger of the plains was their lure of ease. The plains weren’t the hungry earth of the swamps nor the treacherous cliffs of the mountains. The plains could seduce even the wisest and most experienced into lowering their guard just long enough to become the hunted instead of the hunter.
For Vic, such feelings were lies. There was no peace and quiet in the Borderlands. Silence was the sound of stalking, gentle breezes the same as a predator’s breath. The peace of the plains was the allure of a fly-trap ready to snap closed.
She sat quietly, staring over the cold and empty expanse. Even without her training, these plains were unnaturally quiet. Even in the harshest lands there were sounds of a twisted nature; birds howled over still winds while emaciated deer and coyotes picked through rattling twigs. There was life, of a sort, among the dead.
