Shortstories

“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.

The drawing room only had two windows, and both of them were still intact. The rest of the room was bookshelves and fancy statuary, fitting for a high-class lady and sir to entertain their guests. Vic closed the room’s doors and forced a chair under the handle. There. They were as safe as they could be, for the moment.

The moment didn’t last long.

Only a few minutes after she had laid the man out on the threadbare lounge and seated herself on a ragged chair, a deep thudding sound tickled her ear.

Damn. Gripping her rifle, she moved to the windows. Leaning her back against the wall, she carefully tilted her head to peak out and see what was making the sound.

She couldn’t see anything. A fog was crawling up from the south and already starting to cover the ground in its white glow. The sullen throb was following the mist, an ominous heartbeat, slow and steady.

Vic licked her teeth. The building wasn’t a terrible place to fortify, but it could also trap. If she left the house, she could engage the monster — whatever it was — in the open, but that too could be a double-edged knife. If she could only see what the monster was, then she could…

Her eye fell to her unconscious companion. Damn, damn. If the man couldn’t move, neither could she. If there was more than one monster, or it decided to ignore her in favor of easier prey…no, she needed to stand her ground. As quietly as she could, she unlocked the window and pushed it open. Kneeling next to the window, she propped her rifle on the sill and waited.

Vic woke with a start, gasping for air in the dark of the cave. Her heart was pounding in her ears. The air was cool, but sweat was pouring down her face. On reflex, her hand grabbed for the hatchet resting at her side, ready to strike at anything nearby.

The cave was quiet. The dawn light outside was leaking gently into the room. Vic exhaled. It had been a dream. She had been running…no, she had been still but the world was running around her…but weren’t her legs moving? And there was a…shape…

Vic took another deep breath. The dream was gone already, and she wasn’t interested in bringing it back to mind. Dreams were for seers and shamen, and she wasn’t either. She had a long way to travel, and wasting time with dreams wouldn’t help her find the next bullet. She stood up from her roll and stretched the kinks out of her muscles.

Her eye lit on her father’s revolver as she dressed. For six months straight she had been hunting the Borderlands for the bullets, and now the first bullet was in her hands. It didn’t feel real.

As things turned out, the man was finished and standing by the ash of the fire when Vic returned. She tossed him a waterskin and hoisted her bag over her back. “Let’s go.”

“Towards the mountains?” The man coughed. “I thought we were headed east. What’s over there?”

“Me, before nightfall. Quit your whining.”

“What about the…the body?”

“Doesn’t keep good, let the vultures take care of it,” Vic sighed. “Come on, move it! We’re losing light.”

As they walked, Vic took out her father’s map and compass. They were heading northeast, now. If she had read the map properly, they should be about here, but if she saw what she thought she saw, they needed to be about here…

Vic cursed her father again. Then, out of misplaced frustration, she swore at her mother. Neither of them had bothered to write a proper map, and now it was her job to wander around the Borderlands, searching for the bullets that they should have picked up years ago.

Vic opened her eyes.

The icy chill of morning fought to keep her still, poking at her aching muscles and urging her to sleep longer, to wait until the day was warmer. Vic would hear none of it; she sat up, brushing the frost off her cheeks and hair and streching her cramping limbs.

The man was still there, sleeping as best he could while wrapped in what was left of his blanket. Vic took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Damn it all. Kicking dirt on the smoking remains of his fire, Vic walked past the man and snatched up her pack and rifle. “Come on,” she shouted. “Up you get. Time for us to get a move on.”

The man sputtered, jerking upright and casting about. When he realized where he was, he stifled a yawn and slowly crawled upright. “What are you…where are we going?”

Damn, damn, damn fool woman. “If I let you wander off, you won’t make it past sundown. I’m going to take you east a ways until I’m sure you can make it home on your own. This is taking time out of my Hunt, you ken? So I don’t want to hear any complaining about how hungry you are or how much your feet hurt. We’re heading east and we’re going as fast as we can. Got it?”

“I…I got it,” the man rubbed his face. “I suppose asking for breakfast is out?”