#those arms can't even lift those dual axes

[ilikedetectives]

fem Eivor

[alka-di-kijarr]

Disclaimer. The following part of the hunters journey was connected to my #CallOfThePharah on deviantArt in april2021. English is still not my native language, but I wish you a lot of fun reading the next adventure of Nero, Vaas and all the other hunters.

Vazemi species is a closed species. If you want to get your own, please contact me.

The winner of this design - and so the new owner is - TwistedLunatic

Hunters Journey - 019

It was the sound of a violent crack, which caught Vaas’ attention, while he was screening the surrounding area carefully. His view focused on Nero, who was riding on an ostrich-like creature.

"By the gods, ya shoulder sounds terrible."

Nero, actually trying to do some stretching exercises, just gave him a dull smile.

"Is this still from the accident with Pisces?"

"I guess so. Since the invasion I can't sleep for long or deep any more and often wake up with sore joints and muscles. But it gets better during the day, most of the time at least."

Vaas lowered his eyebrows, in grim recollection of the day when they encountered the Pisces in the iced sea of the north. And every event that followed until the very day. Being the old hunter he was, Vaas straightened his back and lifted his chin. This was not the time to fall back into this deep hole he climbed out so laborious over the past weeks. But he had to admit that he could only hope for calm winds during their expedition to the borderlands of Padunay.

The group which was following him and Nero was formed by "anyone they could spare" and unlike other expeditions, those were not the glorious heroes, the old hunters or the veteran seekers. It was a small group of 15 people, most of them were young blooded and without any experience in combating creatures. Vaas rubbed his temporal muscle.

Concerns sprouted deep inside him. It was the first time in all those years he was part of the BlackBestia-HuntingGuild, that he was unsure about which place would be safer. Inside the HQ, or on an expedition. Whatever they would find out here, it better be useful for the problems they had to fix. And Seth should get his hands on a solution to prepare for another invasion. The retired knight was sure there would follow another attack. It was just a question of time.

Behind Vaas a chattering talk became louder and louder, so the old man tilted his head in interest.

"No way! Are you telling me there were books in our own library about this dimensional thing?!"

"E-eh, yes?" Lauriel raised her arms in disbelief and the poor young man next to her lifted his hands in defence.

"How can it be we never talked about that in the tutorials? Or during the preparation meetings?"

"Nobody of you guys ever came to the lib and asked for one of those books...I guess."

The young huntress was filled with so much anger, it really surprised Vaas seeing her in this condition.

"Seth excluded those things...sometimes."

"Sometimes? How about we never had this topic on the table?!"

Vaas sighed and a few of the other new hunters joined the talk. Clara, a huntress from a small village, checked on her dual blades, while a hunter with a double-bladed axe made a grim impression.

"Maybe they did not want to make it more complicated?"

"Or they are scared." Clara raised her right eyebrow and Vaas felt as if everyone's eyes were resting on him, waiting for an answer.

The old man let his view roam the landscape they were passing through. Sand. Sand everywhere. Rock formations, huge and spiky violet-blue crystals and the burning sun above them. His ostrich companion walked relaxed, saving energy for the upcoming part of their journey.

"I don't know what ya guys want to hear from me, really..."

"The reason." For sure, the reason. He knew that. But speaking about this made it hard to even breathe.

"Please Master Vaas, tell us what happened, so we can understand and maybe help in making things better." The axe hunter caught up to Vaas and Nero, while most of the group was coming closer, so everyone could hear the retired knight.

"You must promise to me, that you won't storm Seth's office and pinpoint him after what I will tell you now." Agreeing mumbling was heard.

"It happened many, many years ago. Seth, Tahorn and I were ordered to work together. I was still a kings guard at this time, but a gigantic beast was causing a lot of trouble in the kingsland and many people lost their lives due to it. The crown of Camulada ordered us to work with the hunters, and also Tahorn, part of the crown of Peara, joined in.

It was a huge squad with over fifty hunters, swordsmen, knights and every person you could imagine that was dumb enough to confront this beast. We searched for weeks, following one track after another, but we were always behind.

It took us two months to catch the monster in the act.” Monster? No word Nero was used to hear from Vaas very often.

It was a preposterous creature, sitting on the roof of a house, which belonged to some farmers, munching on a cow between its skull-like jaws.

It was a chilling sound, you could already hear from afar. We moved closer and I spotted that another cow right-wingwas caught between his right wing claws, and one under his left foot. It was still in the middle of its lunch, not noticing us getting closer and closer, through a forest part. Seth and Tahorn were in disagreement about the further steps, but I told them, that we needed to act now, before it would finish its meal and fly off again.”

Nero could see how Vaas mimik was freezing. His mind was there, back at this place all the years ago. When another hunter wanted to raise his voice and tell Vaas to continue, Nero threw a hell of an angry view to the guy. He silenced immediately.

"What...happened then, Vaas?"

“Since our two leading stubborn kids couldn’t figure out a better plan in time, we went with a simple surrounding tactic. We spread in a circle, ready to attack from all sides at once. The basilisks (hunters with huge crossbows and shrouds) tried to fixate the monster, pinning it down and dragging it off the roof. It worked for the first part, and we could land some painful strikes. I cut both hamstrings of the creature deeply, believing it would make it hard for it to stand and fight in this condition, but…

The very moment when everyone gathered around the beast and Tahorn was ready to land a fatal blow on the head,...well, I should have listened to my guts. It hadn’t fought back at all. And I asked myself why.”

"Was it waiting for help?" Clara asked carefully from the side.

"Pff, no. This monster would not need help, even if we would be more than those fifty lost souls we were at that time. We were just so blind. But this was the moment Seth broke with everything that contains weavers and magic potential. The creature lifted its head, and you could see how its body was breaking the light, as if the dimensions were scattering right in front of us. There were other heads, screaming in anger and pain, yet the ‘real head’ remained in silence.

The heads appeared and disappeared as if it was made from aetheric fog. The legs, the back, the wings, everything transformed back and forth, back and forth, and green gas was flowing out of its jaws and its entire body, crawling over the grass. I tried to walk away, but it felt as if someone was grabbing my heart, holding me close to the scenery. One of the hunters right next to me said one word. One atrocious word….yperite.

I felt as if a lightning struck my spine. I swiftly ran towards Seth and Tahorn, grabbing the back of their coats and dragging them away as far as possible, but it was too late. I saw this….I saw this ugly grin on the face of this monster, before I heard whispering words rushing through my mind.”

Vaas fell into silence, and Nero straightened his back just realizing how silent and tense the group was right now.

“What...what did it say?”

"Burn."

"...It opened its jaws and released a giant fireball hitting the ground right in front of Tahorn and Seth, luckily its force thrust us away. Seth and Tahorn both lost their eyesight on one eye, caused by the gas they landed in with their faces. I grabbed them yet again and dragged them deeper into the woods. I..I couldn’t watch back. I couldn’t take care of those poor souls I left behind. I did as my order had been. I protected the brothers. The next thing I remembered was the moment I heard the scream of the creature while it was flying away, high above us. Trying to ease the burns I threw both of the brothers into a small creek. Ripping off my own leg pieces I kneeled beside them. We had more luck than anything else this day.

Just the sheer pressure of the fireblast was the reason why we were not burned by all the gas around us. The first explosion rapidly threw us far away, so that the exploding gas on the ground only touched us shortly. I still don’t know how we managed to survive and find a way home. I…..I should have done more. I should have gone back to the others. I heard their screams every night, for years. Melting and burning in their of armours, unable to rip them off fast enough.”

Neros heart was sinking, heavy like a shipwreck. He placed his hand on Vaas shoulder, seeing this good friend of him as old and weak as never before.

"Vass, we are with you. You are not alone. And you have done everything that was in your power at this moment." Lauriel caught up and placed her hand on Vaas hands.

"Without you, they would have been dead. And none of us would be on this trip." Vaas remained silent, his view empty, laying on the sand in front of them.

"We never caught this monster. But it got a name." he snorted. The group listened up.

"Rangakai, the Artefact." The young archivist behind them gasped, but Nero shook his head and signalled them to back off and remain silent for now. Vaas was drained and deep in his thoughts. Nero wouldn’t be surprised if this was the first time he ever had talked about this.

~

The group followed the lead and by the end of the day they reached a stone formation and Nero decided to stay here for the night. Vaas was still in his thoughts, but at least he tried to organize everything and everyone. Work seemed to bring him down into reality again, yet Nero could see how the shadow of grief, despair and anger was hovering above him.

A while later the group had fed the ostrich, built up sleeping places and over a fire several small animals were cooked.

Lauriel left the ostriches after checking for any wounds or problems they might have after this long trip, but there was no way she could go to sleep or eat now. Questions were racing in her mind and there was only one person she believed could have an answer. The young man, son of a tea merchant and now the keeper of the archives, had made his place on top of the stone formation, the view fixated on the stars above them.

"May I take a seat?" the young man nearly jumped off the stone plate, before he nodded fast.

"You...the moment Vaas called us the name of the beast. Ranga…."

"Rangakai."

"Yes. You seemed as if you would know more about this creature. Can you share your knowledge with me?"

The young man seemed to hesitate, but she used her best smile on him.

"I just want to understand what made this creature so special."

"Creatures."

"Pardon?"

"Rangakai is not only one creature." He sighed and closed his notebook, causing Lauriel to feel a bit bad about asking for his time, now that he was right into crafting a new star map.

"The old,...the forbidden books,...tell that were weavers back in the old days, the days of the mad fireking, who were so eager to rise from their unpopular social standing, that they started to experiment. In this time golemantic magicians were the top tier of arcane masters, but weavers were frown upon. Y-you see, the work of a golemantic can be seen by everyone.

Some of our best weapons are a masterpiece between blacksmiths, rune smiths and golemantics. But the work of a weaver can only be seen by people who can see into the Kahoré or have a weaver potential themselves.  Both nothing you would want to tell someone back in that time. The results are intensive and often blew up the horizon of many people, leaving them in fear and despair for the works of the weaver."

The young man started to nibble on a part of his scarf. Lauriel remained silent.

"Rangakai is the product of many,...dozens of failed experiments before. They robbed children who had a beast potential and ripped them apart, just in hope to try and combine their ‘beast souls’ with the ‘soul of a human’."

"A chimaera, you mean?"

"Y-yes, basically. Or more like an abomination, conjoined with parts of other living beings who needed to die for these cruel experiments.”

"What made them fail in the first place?"

"According to a book with a title I cannot tell you - or else I might lose my own head - they failed because the emotional parts of all creatures AND the one living, which they tried to weave them onto, collapsed. Causing outbursts of anger, uncontrollable behaviour and sudden deaths."

"Unstable…"

"Exactly. Like a glass of wine, with the thinnest layer of glass you can imagine. And Gemini standing on it."

"So there was no chance this could work, and still they...made it work?"

"Sadly, yes. Many centuries later the crown of Camulada found a hidden village in the middle of the mountains, during their patrols. The village was filled with children, but not a single one was able to speak, nor did they express any feelings. The notes I found describe them as puppets. Hollow inside. To the shame of the crown, one of their own great weavers had become schismatic, joined the cult and planned to attack Camulada with this army of...beasts."

"They all were already...manipulated?" Lauriel felt a stone in her chest, her throat was dry and her hands shaky. Those things were humans? Her mind couldn’t process this.

"What did they do with the children?" The young man kept silent for a while.

"There were...rehabilitation programs, in different kinds and manners. Some tried to unweave the beasts, some tried to teach them normal human behaviour. But nothing worked. Sometimes, all out of a sudden, the kids turned into their beast-forms and went on a rampage. At the end the crown ordered to execute all of them.”

Lauriel had tears in her eyes. How could someone be so cruel? The weavers in first place. Both hunters fell into silence, before Lauriel decided to leave and see for Vaas.

"Before I go. Tell me, how did they first find out about the chimaera aspects. The dimension cracking also could be a hallucination.”

"The yperite gas. This attribute belongs to only one known creature. A Methabran-Dragon, who can only be found at the very last spot of the world. No other creature can use it, and we would know if a creature would use it anywhere on Saigon, because of its disastrous impact on the environment and people." Lauriel nodded, before she left in silence.

The young hunter stayed at his place for a little longer, watching and studying the stars.

// Holrun, the Pharaoh of the black sand. What a wonderful star formation… What a tragic story. // Now that he came to think about the pharaoh, who was killed by his own right hand, at a very young age, a very bad feeling invaded his heart. He remembered....

//… And so I - Kladan the magician - imprison you, Holrun, son of the pharaoh Nuftep -thief of the throne - into this statue.

As that no god of the underworld will ever be able to welcome your soul to the afterlife, as long as you are captured inside the beast, which I have mummified, as your grave….

A soul, weaved into the body of a creature you shall be.

Mummified for eternity.

Garnished with gold, and in the colours of the kingdom, so every mortal soul can prey to you, but nobody will ever know your real fate.

The cruel fate I have chosen for you. Chosen for the son of a throne thief.

May your suffer last eternally. //

The young man gulped, closed his notebook and laid down on the stone.

The stars remained silent.