It's your favorite radio DJ, Sergeant Sparks.
Once again giving you some news to shake the blues.
You all know our friend Levi the Leviathan out in the Pacific. Well our sleepy little buddy let out a yawn this morning so if you're anywhere near the Shattered Coast remember to pack your umbrella cause a 50 meter splash is headed your way.
For the Dallas locals out there, the convoy for the Phoenix outpost is leaving at 0800. Those hopping aboard don't forget to pack your sunscreen and extra water because the Arizona deserts give a whole new meaning to 'Wake and Bake'.
On to our final bit of news for the hour, the Dreadwyrm is officially dead. You heard that right folks, our least favorite Caribbean vacationer took a stroll too close to the hole in the world we call the Abyss and got snatched out of the sky by the hand of an angry god.
We don't actually know what that thing was, but you best believe whatever's attached to an arm the size of a small country is something I'll be bowing and praying to. Praying it stays the hell away.
That's all for the news.
This has been DJ Sergeant Sparks of H U N T radio Free Hunt. The only radio station, for hunters, by hunters.
Sparks Out.
- Radio Free Hunt
Well this sucks.
It seems the other people who graduated with me also happened to form a team together and guess what job they signed up for.
Dammit, I was maybe expecting one hunter I knew that might hate my guts, not all of them. I'll just have to stay in the back and keep out of the way, hopefully they forget I exist.
“Oh hell no, how did we get stuck with her.” Zachary is glaring at me when he speaks, my plan to stay out of sight having gone up in flames immediately. The sudden attention sends me instantly into fight-or-flight mode and it takes a force of will to not bolt immediately.
Abel is now looking in my direction too with an equally unfriendly gaze, him and Zackary being the only two geared up in standard militia fatigues, body armor, and helmets. The only difference between them being the massive crossbow strung around Zachary’s back compared to the more standard crossbow Abel carries.
Despite the cold welcome my brain decides it has more important things to focus on and I end up staring in confusion at what appears to be a handgun with a silencer hanging from Abel’s belt. He seems to notice where I’m looking because he wiggles his fingers a bit in front of him and mouths “magic” to me.
Right.
“Hi, uhhh looks like we’re stuck together again.” I manage to get out with forced cheer accompanied by a nervous wave. I’m no stranger to being surrounded by people who hate me, but it never gets any easier.
The other two members of their squad turn to look at me when I speak. Kayla, who I’ve only ever seen in her matte grey suit of medieval knight armor, waves back at me. Dominique on the other hand just crosses his arms, which looks a bit comical in his gigantic modified bomb disposal suit.
They don’t say anything else which only makes me more nervous, so I take a deep breath and decide to get this over with. “Okay, I know you all hate me and honestly it’s kinda deserved-”
“More than ’kinda’.” Dominique cuts in.
I wince a little at the remark, but press on. “But we’re stuck together for this so I’ll try to stay out of your way. If it helps any, I am really really sorry and I don’t know how, but I’ll try to make it up to you for all the shit I pulled.”
I’m not sure if my plea worked as I can’t get a read on Dominique or Kayla because of the helmets, but Abel at least seems to be considering what I said. Zachary just rolls his eyes though
“Yea no, we’d be idiots to trust you. Once a bitch, always a bitch. I do agree on the staying out of our way part.” He says with a snarl in his voice.
It’s not an unexpected response, but I wait around in awkward silence for a minute to see if any of the others will say anything. They don’t so I give another nervous wave before turning around and heading over to the humvee I’ll be riding in for the trip. It had been a lot easier to deal with the hostility when I was younger and expected everyone around me to be an enemy.
Well it could have gone worse and I really should quintuple check my supplies before we leave so it’s not like I had time to hang around and chat anyway.
I meet eyes with the driver as I’m hopping in the back and he gives me a concerned look, but I just shake my head as I get situated and start sorting through my pack. He’s an older guy named Carl who is career militia and would not shut up about his wife and kids when we were introduced this morning.
It might be that I’m a tiny bit jealous. Then again my dad also seemed really kind and loving, but that didn’t mean much in the end.
Carl hasn’t been anything but nice to me so far so I’m not going to be making any snap judgements about him. My assessment so far is that he’s a sweet guy who loves his family, which is how I’ll think of him until I get evidence to the contrary.
When I’m about halfway through my pack and checking if my canteen is full he decides to break the silence.
“Y’know-” He starts, but I can already tell by the tone where this is going.
“Please don’t give me any dad advice.” I interrupt half-jokingly. I’m hoping it didn’t come across as rude, but I’m not sure if I can handle going into my past fuck-ups right now.
Thankfully he doesn’t mind, letting out a short chuckle and putting his hands up in mock surrender “Alright alright, I won’t push. I’ll reserve my ‘fatherly wisdom’ for when you ask.”
It's hard not to smile at the goofy guy and even though we're back to silence it’s a much more comfortable kind. By the time I’ve finished sorting through everything the knot in my stomach has disappeared and I’m feeling much better about the mission.
A peaceful half hour later and only fifteen minutes from departure time we hear a tapping on the glass and when I look over, there she is. Artemis, all glorious one-hundred and ninety centimeters of her. Intense yellow eyes with slit pupils like a cat are framed by crow’s feet along with the other soft wrinkles on her face. Her grey hair is tied back in a short ponytail and she’s wearing her iconic black turtleneck that I know is lined with enchanted mithril. The black leather jacket and pants are both dragon leather and could stop a round from a tank while also being enchanted to blend into the environment on command. And the crowning jewel is slung across her back, The Dragonslayer Bow. It’s as tall as she is and made from bones half as thick as my arms, firing arrows that look more like miniature javelins.
This woman is a goddess… and oh shit I’ve just been staring at her instead of saying anything.
“Yes ma’am, we’re all packed up and ready to roll out.” Carl responds casually, having thankfully been listening to what she said.
“Good, let me know if you run into any issues. And remember to stay alive out there, no heroics. If I catch you doing something stupid that gets you killed I’ll bring you back just to kill you again myself. Got it?” she says in a commanding tone that gives me goosebumps.
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“Yes ma’am.” I squeak out, my voice almost cracking. She doesn’t say anything more and leaves with a short nod, but I am mortified.
Carl seems to have noticed because he’s holding in a laugh so I give him my best death glare, which just results in him bursting out laughing.
Dammit Carl.
I spend the next fifteen minutes agonizing over how badly I messed up, but soon enough our departure time arrives. Oh eight hundred on the dot Carl taps on the roof twice to let our gunner Benji know we’re heading out and we start rolling forward. It’s a twelve hour trip to Santa Fe and there won’t be any laughs or joking around once we pass the perimeter walls. I take level steadying breaths as we cross the main gate to keep myself calm, our convoy now entering enemy territory.
The hardest part of this trip is waiting. A whole lot of nothing is going to happen for most of the drive until something suddenly does. We can’t nod off or we’ll be caught off guard, but it’s hard to keep focus when nothing is happening. It was bad enough on foot, but at least then I had walking to occupy a small piece of my mind. Sitting in the back seat of a vehicle is hypnotic, it'll shut your mind down at the first opportunity.
But where the real hellish part comes from is time, it drips on slowly as we pass by trees and abandoned buildings. Twelve hours is a long time, twelve hours when you feel each second pass is an eternity. You may think an hour has passed, but you look at the clock and it's been five minutes. Reality is how you experience it here, we could be on this route for weeks, whatever the clock says doesn't mean anything.
Just waiting and waiting and staring at the trees and the houses and the rocks and knowing at any moment something could leap out from behind one and ruin your life. But there aren’t any changes, every time I think I see a monster it’s a pattern in a tree or a shadow on the ground. It's never anything until the moment it is.
It’s been two hours according to my watch and I’m already losing my mind. There are no trees now, just tall grass that stretches on for hundreds of kilometers in all directions. It’s somehow worse, we can see even farther, but there's less to see and a lot more nothing to look at. I can't tell if we're moving forward or passing the same spot in a loop, maybe we'll be stuck here for the rest of our lives.
It’s the four hour mark and I feel like I’ve signed up for my own personal hell. There’s still nothing but dirt and grass and I can’t tell how long we’ve been here. I know by the clock that it has been four hours total, but how much time has actually passed is unknown. This feels like all I’ve ever known or will know. Perhaps we're stuck in an anomaly, an as of yet discovered section of frozen time.
Is the air rippling? Are the shadows moving closer? Did I die and this is what the afterlife is like?
By the halfway mark I can feel my mind fraying, clouding over from the fog of my burnt out attention span. I’m waiting for something to happen, anything at all. I don’t care if it’s a monster or an anomaly, as long as it’s not more grass. When the vehicle starts slowing down I’m ready to jump out before it gets to a stop, frantically unclipping myself from the seat’s safety harness.
A staticky voice comes on the shortwave letting us know we’re good for a five minute break and I burst out the door into the open, excited to move my limbs even if we’re still in a dangerous area. I’m not about to let my guard down, but it’s a whole different feeling keeping vigilant when you’re standing on your own two feet.
After shaking my stiff legs out I stretch a bit until I get the feeling back in my muscles and some sharpness back in my thinking. Grabbing the canteen out of the humvee, I lean back against the armored door and start sipping at my water. Cool relief spreads through my tense body and I'm almost relaxed when a hand on my shoulder has me practically jumping out of my skin.
“Woah, easy there.” It's Carl with his arms up like he spooked a deer and I have no idea how he snuck up on me.
“What is it?” I ask accusingly, unable to keep the irritation of the day from bleeding through.
Despite my tone he still smiles warmly at me. “You’ve been firing on all cylinders this whole time, you’re burning yourself out.”
“I’d rather not die from an ambush.” I shoot back, knowing I’m being more of a brat than needed.
“Kiddo this is convoy work, you have to trust your subconscious more. You’ll never make it the whole way focusing on everything all the time-”
I hear the flap of wings and am diving at the same time Carl drags me to the ground and a whole lot of something happens all at once.
There’s a screech of claws on metal, a loud crack, and a slam of something heavy hitting one of the humvees. I get a short glimpse of the massive vulture before it explodes into gore along with a chunk of the ground nearby like a stick of dynamite went off. I already know it was Artemis before I even see the tail of the arrow buried in the crater of dirt. She’s standing with her bow out and the string still vibrating from the shot. Kayla is nearby shaking her arm out while Dominique is slumped next to their vehicle with a chunk of his shoulder in shreds.
“Excellent reflexes Kayla, it could have taken off Dominique’s head if you hadn’t knocked it off course.” Artemis says as she walks up to the pile of armor and blood that is Dominique, pulling out a metal tube with a red cross I recognize as a Pick Me Up. She jabs it into his shoulder and I can visibly see the wounds start to close and the bleeding stop.
“I’ll save the boy’s lecture about relying too much on armor for when he’s clear headed. For now, I believe you earned that core Kayla. Be quick about it, we can’t stay too long.” Her tone is sharp and demands no argument.
She’s just as awesome in person.
“You are very kind, Miss Artemis, thank you.” Kayla responds with a curtsy, which looks ridiculous in her armor, and immediately starts to carve a rune into a chunk of the creature’s leg.
I keep one eye on the sky in the short time it takes, but it looks like there was only one vulture or the rest left when it died. That is of course when the ground starts to rumble and mounds of dirt explode open around us.
Seems we’ve made a bit too much noise.
Unslinging my bow in an instant, I shoot an arrow into a cloud of dust at where I'm assuming the things’ head is. When enough dirt settles to show the shape of the oversized scorpion there’s an arrow dissolving in its shoulder causing it to thrash about with snapping claws.
Tch, slightly off.
The next arrow gets it in the face, dropping it dead, and I can already hear the twanging of crossbows from the dozen militia and hunters. It’s over in seconds with maybe twenty or so dead scorpions littering the area, but we don’t stick around for something bigger to catch wind of the carnage. Dominique is shoved into the back of a humvee and we take off again, crunching over the remains of one of the scorpions on our way. Abel and Kayla have somehow ended up in the same vehicle as me, maybe to make space for him to lay down.
I can’t tell if it’s as awkward for them as it is for me, but neither of us say anything and I go back to scanning the barren dirt and empty skies for threats. It’s more tedious work, but now with the added tense silence hanging between us making it worse. Eventually I steel my nerves and speak up.
“I am really sorry about everything, I do mean that, and I will make up for it somehow.” I say to the window as I'm afraid to turn around and look at them. It still amazes me that I can deal with deadly monsters and yet still be such a coward when it comes to people.
“What was the core for?” Abel asks, the curiosity in his tone throwing me off balance. It’s hard not to know what he’s talking about though, if there was a singular incident that I’m infamous for, it’s stealing a tier three monster’s core.
Not that it would have gone to us anyway, initiates never get to keep their training hunt spoils.
“If you want to make it up to us, well me anyway, Dom is a hard nut to crack. I don't think Kayla was ever upset, Zack will probably hate you forever but he's been an ass lately. What was I saying? Right, the core, I've been dying to know and the initialization rumor always made zero sense.” He rapid fire spouts at me. If he had a tail, it’d be wagging from how excited he was right now.
I forgot how much he likes to talk.
It takes me a moment to think over because I’d rather not explain the ritual, but I’m also desperate for any good will here. I’m hoping that he’ll be happy with a half answer.
“I needed a tier three core for a ritual to deal with a personal issue that's kind of private.” I grind out carefully.
“You couldn't ask the Hunter’s Guild? They have doctors and stuff and you’re an initiate, well were an initiate.” He asks looking confused.
Alright Alex, little bit of trust here. It’ll be worth it. I hope it’ll be worth it…
“I um, I kinda ran away from the USGA.” I manage to choke out. I can feel Kayla shifting uncomfortably in her seat at the statement and Abel sucks in his breath through his teeth.
“Yea, so I didn't really trust anyone, especially not any kind of authority. It was dumb of me looking back and not really as big a deal as I thought, but I was still an asshole so yea. Sorry.” I give a defeated shrug as I finish. Even though it’s spiking my anxiety, It also feels surprisingly nice to get off my chest.
“That definitely explains a lot. So what was the ritua-” Abel stops mid question when Kayla grips his shoulder and shakes her head. I'm not sure what conclusion she's come to, but I'm grateful regardless.
“Alright, if you ever feel up to talking id love to know, but otherwise consider yourself forgiven. Right Kayla?” He responds jovially, though I can’t help but feel suspicious.
Kayla tilts her head. “It was never something I considered worth being upset about. However If it comforts you, you can consider yourself forgiven by me.”
“Just like that? You’re not angry?” I ask disbelievingly.
“Nope, everyone was breaking rules so it’d be weird to hold a grudge over that. I was concerned earlier today ‘cause you used to be prickly as a cactus and I thought you were stuck up. Knowing you came from that nightmare place makes it hard to blame you.” He shrugs his shoulders, giving me a silly smirk like none of this was a big deal. I still feel terrible for how I used to be, but maybe it’s not completely hopeless.
Maybe the others will also be as reasonable? Or them being angry is the reasonable response and Abel is far too forgiving. At least I know there’s two people who won’t hate talking to me, probably.