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Chapter Text

The Great Jagras bellowed, forcing Sumi to a skidding halt. The area she’d chosen to confront it was wide and flat, ideal for the fight, without any obvious avenue of escape for either her or the Monster. The Great Jagras’ roar ended, mouth slamming shut with a threatening clack of gargantuan teeth. 

Sumi resumed her jog, drawing her sword from its sheath at her hip as she circled the Monster. Her blade was a dull gray, two feet long from hilt to tip, fairly unadorned compared to the majority of Hunter’s weapons she’d seen. The shield on her right was a simple buckler, lashed to her forearm with thick leather bands. It hardly felt an appropriate tool with which to fight something that could have swallowed her whole. 

Something that was, in fact, trying to swallow her whole. The Great Jagras launched forward, rearing upward as it closed the gap at a terrifying pace. Sumi dove to the side just as its head came down, throwing up a cloud of dust as it collided with the spot she’d been standing. She lashed out blindly with her left hand as she dove, feeling her blade scrape against the Jagras’ hide. She awkwardly tucked her dive into a roll, stumbling to her feet just in time to see a massive tail whipping towards her gut. 

She brought her shield up at the last second, sandwiching it between the tail and her body. The force of the blow rang against her breastplate, which thankfully took the brunt of the hit. 

What her armor didn’t absorb was still enough to fling her ten feet or so, rolling to an undignified stop face-down in the mud. 

With a pained and defiant shout she shoved herself up, finding the Jagras again. It was pacing sideways, watching her warily. She could see a thin cut on its right foreleg, which brought a satisfied smile to her face. She’d honestly wondered if her first attempt at forging a Hunter’s blade would scratch the thing in the slightest. 

Reassured by the small victory, she charged forward with her shield raised. 

The Jagras met her with a swipe of its claws, scraping down the length of the shield. The attack spun her to one side, but this time she stayed on her feet, so she thrust out on reflex, feeling the resistance of her blade sinking half-way into the Jagras’ shoulder. She slipped the blade out as fast as it went in.

The Jagras roared in fury, whipping its head around to snap at her. She met its open jaws with her heels dug into the dirt, shield braced with both arms in front of her. The Jagras slammed into her shield and recoiled in shock, a single tooth spinning off into the air. 

Sumi took advantage of its momentary confusion to leap forward, slashing repeatedly at the thick mane around its neck. Her blade was nearly tangled in the thick spines that covered the area, but her sword was just sharp enough to cut through the mess. 

She pulled her sword back to see it covered in viscous blood. The Jagras began to stumble away from her, panting hard. 

She didn’t let up. She leapt forward even while the beast tried to retreat, bringing her shield down on the top of its foot in a vicious double-handed blow, feeling bones crunch underneath the shield’s edge. 

The Jagras’ foot flailed, flinging her up and away from the monster. She tucked into a ball in the air, trying to protect her head. She landed on the rocky ground back-first, knocking the air out of her lungs. She groaned, holding her side. She could hear the Jagras limping forward, rattling the pebbles around her head. She tried to stand, but found a splitting pain lancing through her ribs. She fell back with an agonized gasp. The Jagras continued to approach. 

Sumi fumbled at her belt, grasping for the familiar bottle. She found it in a split second, bringing it to her lips. She gulped greedily, until a sudden lurch ripped it out of her hands. Something was pressing down on her left leg, dragging her away. She felt the armor around her calf buckle, then lift into the air. She forced her pained expression away, opening her eyes.

The Great Jagras had her leg in its jaws, lifting her into the air. For a surreal moment her disoriented brain was reminded of a child slurping at noodles, until a cool rush flowed outward from her core, clearing her thoughts. She scrabbled for her sword, which she kept tied to her left hand. 

The Jagras tossed her upward slightly, mouth opening wider. She could see straight down its mouth. 

Sumi lunged forward, plunging her sword into the Great Jagras’ reptilian eye. The blade slid forward to the hilt. The Jagras froze for a moment, then gave a shudder, falling to the ground. Dead. 

A second later a massive arrow thumped into its head, the shaft burying itself a solid foot in the Monster’s skull. Sumi just lay there, panting, staring at the open sky above her. 

Finally, when she had enough of her breath back, she waved her arm accusingly in the vague direction the arrow had come from. “I already killed it! I didn’t need that!”

“You hadn’t when I shot!” Came a retort, half defensive and half amused. 

“Then your arrow’s slow as shit, Souta.”

“Oh, really? Almost getting eaten brings out the profanity, it seems.” Souta’s voice was drawing closer. Sumi didn’t raise her head to look at him. 

“I did it. My kill, fair and square.”

“You sure did. Your very first.”

“Finally.” Sumi heaved. This was her third Hunt; the first two had ended predictably, pitifully, with her limping back to camp on the arm of her trainer, Souta. The more experienced, but still relatively new, Hunter now stood over her, blocking the sun from her eyes with his signature grin. 

“How’s it feel?”

“Sore.”

“Not your body, genius. I meant how does it feel to have your first Hunt under your belt?”

A few sarcastic responses flitted through Sumi’s head, but she discarded them. Her face split with a grin that matched Souta’s. “It feels good. Damn good.”

She reached out a hand, which Souta took, hauling her to her feet. It had been two months since she’d started training as a Hunter, and this was the culmination of a few hundred hours of sweaty, exhausting work. Days spent pushing her body past limits she’d never known existed, nights crawling through the underbrush with her heart in her throat, ears keen to any and everything around her, and, if she was honest with herself, years of idle daydreams. It had all come together for this moment. 

The buckled leg armor forced her into an awkward limp as they set about preparing the corpse, carving what they could in the field. Any kill this large in the jungle attracted attention fast. Even now she could spot scavengers circling through the edges of the clearing, eying the Great Jagras’ body jealously. Souta fired off a flare, alerting the Guild to their position. A team would be there shortly to cart away the body for proper processing. 

Much of the Jagras was too tough to carve away, at least without tearing it to useless shreds. Following Souta’s careful instruction she managed to trim only select pieces, those that were damaged in the fight in convenient fashion or were soft enough to separate easily. 

The rest of the process passed through in a blur, Sumi stamping her name on a half-dozen sheets that Guild members presented to her to verify her kill, confirming her consent to having a portion of the kill be garnished as Guild fees, and another half-dozen sheets that she didn’t even bother to read. It was only once the corpse was hauled away, directed and escorted by Souta, that she found herself alone in the clearing for the first time in hours. 

Afternoon had turned to evening in the meantime, filtering the sun through the jungle’s branches at an angle. Sumi limped through the clearing with her eyes on the ground, searching for the piece that she knew was somewhere around. 

She finally found it, half-covered by dirt. The Jagras’ tooth, knocked loose by her shield. It was longer than her hand, chipped off at the base. She awkwardly knelt to pick it up, brushing dirt off it with the cuff of her sleeve. It hadn’t been damaged in any other spots, nicely maintaining its serrations and fine tip. She ran her finger across the surface, feeling its edges. It was a luminous white, almost ivory, slight patterns of discoloration only noticeable when she brought it right up to her eye. She carefully tucked it into a pocket, making sure it was well-secured. 

The trip back to the village seemed to take less and less time every day. The forest’s trails were beginning to become familiar, their twisting paths and unnecessary switch-backs slowly revealing a subtle logic. The wider trails were cleared by Kelbi, which preferred to keep their paths meandering to avoid missing any choice fruit. The smaller ones were game trails of smaller mammals, direct and simple, save for where they veered away from the routes the largest predators took. She couldn’t have drawn a map of it to save her life, but navigating it was nonetheless becoming an unconscious skill. 

When she reached home night had fallen, but her father was still busy at the forge. A few lanterns were lit, giving her childhood home a comfortable glow in the distance. Her father was too absorbed with his work to notice her approach, his hammering drowning out the clank of her armor. 

Now that she thought about it, she hadn’t come home with her armor on, yet. She normally dropped it off at Souta’s before heading home, like she had her sword and shield earlier.

Unfortunately , she thought, giving her smashed leg an appraising glance, that isn’t an option tonight. 

“Hey!” She finally called as she thumped over the small bridge before the house, “I’m home!”

Sumi’s father finally looked up from his work. “There you are!” He raised his hammer in greeting, wiping sweat from his brow. “Was starting to wonder if one of them beasts finally did you in.”

“Tried its best,” Sumi smacked a fist against her damaged leg, “But they didn’t manage. One less Great Jagras out in the jungle tonight.” 

Her father narrowed his eyes at her, inspecting her from head to toe. He didn’t want to admit it, but she could tell the last few years that his eyesight was worsening. “Is that the armor you made yourself?”

Sumi rolled her eyes preemptively. “It is.” 

“And did you make the greave and cuisse like that on purpose?”

“No, that was actually a last-minute suggestion from the Great Jagras a few hours ago.”

Her father raised a bushy eyebrow. “I can see he was persuasive.”

“He had a hell of a mouth on him, let me tell you.”

Sumi thumped up the porch, flopping down into a chair next to her father. He took his latest project out of the fire, carefully quenching it. 

“Alright, then, let’s see it.” He dragged a stool between them, patting it invitingly. She grabbed her left leg with both hands and managed to pivot it into place with an awkward thump. He turned it in his hands with a practiced eye, squinting at the dents. “Did quite a number on this, didn’t you?” 

Sumi let him stare as she pulled her helmet off, dropping it to the ground beside her chair. She ripped the twine out of her hair, letting it fall down to her shoulders in a tangled, greasy mess. Her father looked away from her armor for the first time, meeting her tired eyes. She could see the switch flip in his head, from Blacksmith to Dad. 

“Honey! Sumi’s home! Get her some stew, and a cup from the cellar!” He called toward the house. Sumi could see her mom moving from room to room through the windows, hollering back a muffled confirmation of some kind. Without the constant roar of the forge or the clink of hammers she could hear the excited pitter-patter of her brother’s feet running across the house. 

“I was thinking a prybar, right about here.” Sumi offered, pointing towards a weaker joint in the armor. Her father’s attention snapped back to the work at hand, hand rubbing his stubbly chin. 

“Mm. Easy enough, but it’ll ruin the whole piece.”

“So? I’ll be making a new set soon enough.”

“So? So, don’t waste perfectly good metal, Sumi. You know that.”

She huffed, crossing her arms. “My armor won’t even be made of metal much longer, anyway.”

“You’re right,” He half-agreed, pulling experimentally at a seam, “It’ll be made of something much more expensive, much harder to replace. Something you’d want to know how to pull off without breaking entirely.”

“Then I guess it’s a good thing this one’s just metal.” Sumi mumbled half-heartedly, but he had a point. She wouldn’t argue it any further. 

“Hand me that.” He said, pointing at a tool behind her. She awkwardly twisted around in her chair, handing it back to him. 

Sumi’s mother came out of the house with a steaming bowl of stew in one hand, a cool mug in the other. She greeted Sumi with a long-suffering and extraordinarily patient smile, staying uncharacteristically quiet about her disheveled experience. Sumi’s little brother, Naoki, came skidding around the corner a moment later, his momentum nearly sending him tumbling off the porch. 

Her mother set the bowl on the edge of the forge, to keep it warm, then handed her the mug. Sumi took it with a grateful smile. Naoki ran up, oohing and awwing at her armor, grabbing it with grubby hands. 

Sumi lifted the mug to her lips and took a deep drink, anticipating the rare treat of cold water. She sputtered in surprise when the taste of cool mead hit her tongue with a pleasant burn. 

“Hmm?” Her father grunted, glancing up from her leg. 

Sumi’s mother slipped her a sly glance and subtle wink. “She was just surprised it was cold, dear. Naoki, get out of your father’s way.”

Sumi wiped her mouth to hide a smile, taking another, slower, more savoring swig of the mug. 

“Did you get ‘em?!” Naoki asked, pulling at her arm. “You did, didn’t you? ‘Cause you wouldn’t be here, you’d be at the healer’s again if you didn’t, right?”

“Yeah, I got ‘em, Naoki.” She ruffled his hair. “Here, look. Even brought you this.” She twisted to grab at her hip, pulling a small pouch she’d prepared earlier. It came loose from her belt after a firm tug. Naoki snatched it out of her hand greedily. 

He pulled back the drawstring, dumping the contents. A thin sheet of Great Jagras skin fluttered out into his hands, each individual scale as long as one of his fingers. He held it up to the lantern light, inspecting it with all the precision of a six year old jeweler. 

“Whassit?” He finally asked, turning it around. 

“The scales of a Great Jagras. There isn’t a blade in the whole forge that’ll scratch that.”

He looked at her with suspicious eyes. “I don’t believe you.”

“Give it a shot, I dare ya.” She leaned in towards him, voice dropping to a stage-whisper. “I bet you dessert for a week you can’t do a thing to it.”

His eyes lit up at the prospect of the challenge, jumping excitedly to face their father. “Dad! Dad! Can I use a knife right now? I gotta get Sumi’s desserts!”

“Not right now, Naoki. I’m working on Sumi’s armor. You can give it a shot tomorrow morning when I have time to watch, before the Otas come over to pick up their scythe.”

“Promise?” He demanded, a request that had become something of a recent obsession of his. 

“Promise.” Her father agreed solemnly. 

Sumi sipped peacefully at her mead, enjoying the cool breeze rustling through her hair. She took a few scoops of the stew as she and her father chatted about potential ways to salvage the leg pieces, and her mother pulled up a chair to the forge’s side just to stay close. Naoki crawled up into her lap with a hastily selected rock, his little arms working as hard as they knew how to make a mark on the Jagras scales. Sumi leaned back in her chair for a moment, watching the clouds float past the stars high above. 

She was a Hunter now. It was official, not just paperwork; she’d killed a Monster on her own. It had been one of the hardest things she’d ever done, but she’d never once struggled to stay focused. For two months it had been nearly all she thought of, the Hunt consuming every waking moment. For the first time, though, she was confronting what that really meant. 

She was going to be a Hunter. There wasn’t any two ways about it; she couldn’t imagine any other life for herself now. The village she’d spent her entire life in, which had once been all she’d known, already seemed too small to fit her. But that was the thing about Hunters, wasn’t it? Souta had already told her that. 

She wasn’t just going to be staying in this little town, Hunting whatever strayed just a bit too close for comfort. She’d be leaving, and at this rate, she’d be leaving soon. Probably in a few months, when Souta was going to be recalled back to the Guild. She’d go with him, most likely. 

She looked at her family, bathed in the mixed gold of the lantern light and forge’s embers. Her father’s dark beard sported fresh black burn marks and the earliest wisps of gray curls, her mother’s hands ink stains that covered growing wrinkles. 

When she left, how long would it be until she saw them again? She looked at Naoki, who was biting his lip with concentration as he scrawled on his new gift. How much taller would he be the next time she saw him? An inch? A foot? Taller than her?

She closed her eyes, savoring the last sip of her mead. 

She tried to focus on its taste on her lips. 

The wind in her hair, wicking away the sweat of the humid day. 

Crickets chirped in the field, drowned out by the occasional cicada. 

The grass rustled. 

Trees swayed. 

Her family chattered around her, familiar and comfortable. 

That was all she needed to think about right now. 

    Sumi woke some time later to a darker night, with only the last embers of the forge’s fire lighting the area. The armor on her leg lay in discarded pieces about the porch, and her half-finished bowl of stew sat cold. 

    Her father still sat across from her, arms folded across his chest as he stared into the middle-distance, eyes unfocused as they gazed out at the distant forest. It seemed her mother and brother had gone to bed some time ago. Sumi quietly slipped her leg off the stool, leaning forward. Her father grunted his acknowledgement that she was awake. 

    Sumi flipped open the pouch at her belt, carefully unwinding the twine that had kept it secured. She slipped the Great Jagras’ tooth out, holding it in her flat palm. Her father still wasn’t looking, so she scooted her chair up alongside his. 

    “I got you something, too.” She whispered. 

    “Oh?” He asked, turning to her. She presented the Jagras tooth carefully, as if it were a holy relic. Her father leaned close, whistling low. “This from the beast you killed today?” Sumi nodded. He picked it up, pinching it between two fingers to bring it into the moonlight. “It’s light. Like air, almost.” He ran his calloused thumb over its serrations, gently prodding the tip. “And sharp. Damn sharp, it is.” 

    “And it’s tough.” Sumi said. “Tougher than any knife you’ve got. If you can figure out how to put a hilt on it’ll be the only knife you need for the rest of your life.”

    “And you’re giving it to me?” He asked, quiet voice growing ever so slightly raspy. 

    “Of course. I got other teeth on the hunt, after it was dead, but I knocked that one loose right in the middle of it. There’ll be a lot more where that one came from, but there’ll only ever be one that was my first. I couldn’t think of anything better to give you.”

    “Thank you.” Her father replied simply, watery eyes pointedly locked on the tooth. 

    Sumi thought of a few more things to say, something about how she would be leaving soon, or a thanks for all he’d taught her, or even just offering a few ideas on how to use the tooth. In the end, she decided the best thing to say was nothing. Daughter and father sat on the porch late into the night without a word, silently taking in the view. Eventually, by unspoken agreement, they tidied up the forge and headed inside to sleep. 

Chapter Text

The next day was oddly melancholy to Sumi; the elation of her first successful Hunt, which had become the talk of the village, was tempered by the constant thought that it meant she would soon be leaving. As soon as a replacement Hunter for the village arrived, in fact, something that Souta only shared with her that morning. 

She took stock of her equipment in the early morning. Aside from her armor, nothing had taken much damage in the fight. Her sword and shield were both in good condition, especially after she attentively oiled and polished them as she did every morning. None of her belt buckles had broken, and she still had plenty of potion left, so it would be a while yet before she needed to go on a restocking expedition into the jungle.

While she worked her way through her morning exercises, sparring with the imaginary beasts that prowled the front garden of her childhood home, she still found herself dissatisfied with the balance of the blade. Its origins, being originally cast from the mold of a machete, still clung stubbornly on. It had served her well so far, but it was a tad top heavy, and lacked a crossguard of any kind. She also had noted that the handle, when slicked by humidity and sweat, was easier to lose her grip on than she would have preferred.

It would be a few more days before her share of the Great Jagras’ corpse was processed and divvied up to be distributed by the Guild, which meant that all she had to work with were the parts she and Souta had managed to carve off themselves.

That pile, which wasn’t itself insignificant, was mounded beside the raw iron and copper her father kept on hand. She had on hand several slices of hide folded atop one another, alongside several teeth, knuckle bones, muscle, tendons, and a single claw. 

The hide, which would be harder than the regular jagras hide she’d had access to before, was already mentally slotted in to be used on her shield. The teeth, while appealing, were too short to be useful as a blade on their own, only four or five inches long. It was the claw and the knuckle bone it had been attached to that interested her. 

She supposed she shouldn’t technically refer to it as a knuckle bone; a quick flipping through of her notebook identified it as a “metatarsal” bone. She thought knuckle bone was descriptive enough, though, considering the fact that she’d pulled it out of the beast’s foot via the knuckle, but Souta would have chastised her for the improper terminology. 

It was one of the smaller metatarsals, about five inches long or so. She put it up against her sword, comparing their size. She decided it would work decently well for a crossguard, even if it was oversized in comparison. It wasn’t like she had anything better to work with. 

Attaching it would be a separate problem, though. She’d have to figure out a way to affix it to the sword without damaging its structural integrity. A few test chips at the end of the bone found that it was even too hard for her blade to easily cut, so she couldn’t split it in half or something simple like that.

Adhesives would be a failing point, no matter how strong they were; no glue could match the preternatural strength of a Monster’s bones. She sifted through the Great Jagras’ parts, contemplating.

She briefly tested the monster’s claw as a cutting tool, trying to pierce the bone. It worked slightly better than her knife, but it was too thick to be of use, lacking any sharp edge besides its point. She could use it to chisel a hole through the bone, given enough time, but the resultant gap would necessarily be too wide.

The other option that caught her eye was the sinew. She’d once used a similar material to restring Souta’s bow with her father, before she was training to be a Hunter. Simply cutting the sinew to length had been a laborious process of many hours, but it was possible. If she were to tie it in a proper fashion, maybe she could use that to affix the crossguard?

It would require more than just a simple knot, though. She’d worked with leather strips before, but something that complex was well outside her expertise. She’d seen some fairly complex ties on the caravan’s traveling tents, but there were none in town to ask. She racked her brain for someone in the village to ask for help, desperately wanting to avoid digging through Souta’s unorganized piles of books for some mention of fancy knot tying.

The only person that came to mind was Oji, the tavern owner. She could vaguely remember one of his nightly stories including the time he had spent as an airship crewman. It was a thin thread to cling onto, but when she thought of the piles upon piles of unstable piles that made up Souta’s so-called “library”, she found herself willing to try. She gathered up everything she thought she’d need and set off.

The walk down to the tavern was brief, as any walk in her tiny nameless village was bound to be, but felt particularly short now that she’d spent so many hours wandering through the jungle. She found it hard to believe her childhood self had ever considered the village’s main street far away.

The tavern was at the dead center of town, serving as both the only restaurant in miles and the village’s garrison in the event of a Monster attack. It was big and blocky, with thin glassless windows carved out of the thick logs that made up its walls. The basement was stuffed full with excess rice and grain, carefully preserved in case of drought or famine. The familiar scent of cooking meals filled her nose as she pulled open the foot-thick front door, bringing a smile to her face.

Tables circled a central pillar, around which a simple staircase wound upward to the second floor. The edges of the room, particularly where the windows were cut out, were kept studiously clear, leaving even the largest building in town with a remarkably cluttered feeling. It was still several hours before most would begin to take their lunch, so the tables and chairs were mostly unoccupied aside from a few elderly villagers playing betting games with grains of rice. She gave them a friendly smile and wave.

At first Oji was nowhere to be seen, until Sumi heard his huffing breaths and heavy footfalls as he began to wind his way down the stairs. He had a large barrel gripped in his hands, blocking his view so that he was using his feet to feel his way down the stairs.

Sumi jogged up to him, grabbing the other lip of the barrel. When he felt his load suddenly lighten he let out a relieved breath, tilting his head around his burden to see who was helping him.

    “Ah! Sumi, should’ve known it was you. No one else in this joint would be caught dead lending a hand without being hollered at. We’re heading behind the bar, alright?”

    “Got it.” Sumi confirmed, craning her neck around as they shuffled backward towards the bar. They reached it shortly and dropped the barrel into place with floorboard rattling thud. 

    “‘Preciate it.” He said with a simple nod, wiping his brow. 

    “Not a problem.” 

    “So, what brings you here? Finally got tired of your mom’s cooking?”

    “Even if that were true, you’d never hear me confessing to it. I like my insides on the inside, thank you very much.”

    “Smart girl.” He winked, then crouched down to begin organizing something behind the bar. “So what can I do for you?”

    “Got an odd request, actually.” Sumi brought up the bag she’d brought and dropped it on the counter. “I have the fuzziest memory of you working on an airship at some point. Was I right about that?”

Oji popped up from behind the bar with a nostalgic smile warming his face. “Sure was. For about a decade or thereabouts, actually. What about it?”

    “How good are you with knots?” Sumi drew her sword, placing it on the table alongside the bag. She drew out the Great Jagras’ sinew and the bone. “I’m trying to get this bone on here , to work as a crossguard, but I can’t cut it in the slightest. Is there any way to tie it on?”

    “‘Course you can.” He answered immediately. “You can tie anything to anything, if you’ve got enough rope. Why not glue it, though?”

    “Won’t be strong enough.” Sumi answered simply. She’d long since learned that any conversation with the constantly busy chef had to be kept incredibly to-the-point unless you wanted to lose his attention to another project.

    “Mm.” He acknowledged, picking up the sinew and running it through his fingers. Despite the day or so it had spent out in the open air it was still in remarkable condition, without any sign of rotting or deterioration. He unspooled it with familiar fingers, picking apart any knots as fast as he encountered them. His bushy eyebrows lowered into a focused squint as he appraised it. “Shouldn’t be hard. Cut it to size, wrap it up with your standard square lashing. Won’t take more than a minute.”

    Sumi winced. “Cut it? That’s a taller order than you’d expect.”

    “Yep. If you tie it without cutting it you’ll end up with either a big old string following you along or a knot so fat it’ll get in your way.”

    Sumi pulled up a chair, propping her head up with her fist as she considered. “What if there was more to tie? Is it long enough for multiple knots?”

    “Should be yeah. What’re you thinking about?” 

    “What if I add a hand guard?” Sumi dug into the bag, pulling out the Great Jagras’ claw. She put it up against the hilt, double-checking its length. “If you can tie it at an angle I think this’d be perfect. Make a crossguard and handguard at the same time.”

He placed the bone on the top of the hilt, then positioned the claw to make his own measurements. He shuffled their respective placements down until he nodded to himself. “Yeah. This’d work good.” 

Sumi inspected his work. When placed at the angle Oji had chosen, the claw protruded just an inch or so below the hilt, giving the pommel a nasty spike. The root of the claw met the bone just before its end, where the two natural lumps fit together conveniently snugly. She put her hand up against the hilt and found her hand would still fit comfortably inside the space, now with her fingers protected from sudden and undesired amputation. 

    “Looks perfect to me. Can you tie it for me?”

    “Nope.” Oji denied, clapping imaginary dust off his hands. “But I can show you how to do it.”

    “Oh, come on.” Sumi groaned. 

    “No buts. I never trusted my life to an engine I didn’t help maintain or a balloon I hadn’t checked myself, and I’ve heard enough of Souta’s stories to know the same should be true of a Hunter.”

    “Souta uses plenty of gear he didn’t make himself, you know.”

    “Souta didn’t have a father that’d bust my butt if he found out I let you skip out on a lesson, either. Now, mark the positions where you want ‘em to be…”

    Oji began walking her through the steps of tying the pieces together, spouting off constant lingo that she could only assume was from his days on a ship. She could infer most of what he meant from context, but she had to ask a few questions here and there, which he answered in simple enough terms. 

    She was tying a modified lashing, the kind meant to secure cross-bracing. She started with a fancy knot below the joint, then began systematically wrapping the two crossing portions in an alternating ‘x’ pattern. When Oji felt that the bone crossguard had been secured enough she moved onto the claw, bringing the tendon around to secure the root of it to the end of the bone. She painstakingly chipped out a small divot at the end of the bone to allow it to slot in better, then tied it into place. 

    The result was shockingly steady all on its own, but she wanted to be absolutely certain nothing could go wrong. She tied the same knot at the bottom of the hilt, then wrapped the tooth with even more sinew, until it was an unshakeable knot. She tested it with a few perfunctory bangs against the countertop and found it as sturdy as stone. Oji gave her an appreciative thumbs up.

    More people were beginning to trickle into the tavern behind her, but it seemed she still had Oji’s undivided attention. The sinew was almost entirely used up by the three lashings, but a few feet of the white cordage remained dangling from the bottom of the hilt. 

    “Now wrap it up a few more times, tidy up that loose end,” Oji instructed.

    “Actually, I think it’s perfect. I’ll tie that end around my wrist in a fight, so it doesn’t get knocked away from me.”

    “Don’t know about that. Seen sailors with too much crap hanging off ‘em get snagged by a passing rope, usually ending up with them getting yanked off the deck. Don’t think you’d want that to happen to you on a Hunt.”

    Sumi tapped her machete blade thoughtfully while the tavern continued to fill. It was looking like a busy day for Oji. “No, I think I’ll keep it tied. Risky, sure, but I figure ending up weaponless on a Hunt is more dangerous than pretty much anything else.”

    Oji shrugged. “Alright, your call. Talk to you in a bit, though. Looks like we gotta get to work.” 

    Sumi raised an eyebrow, wondering what he meant by ‘we’. She turned around to find the tavern steadily filling just as the bell, situated on the roof above, began to ring. The sound made the crowd pouring in surge forward. Sumi stood up fast enough to knock over her stool, quickly gathering up her goods. 

    She didn’t know what had prompted the bell to begin ringing, but knew it couldn’t be good. 

She began to spot unfamiliar faces in the crowd, something that stood out glaringly in a village that had never hosted more than a few dozen people. The strangers were wearing unseasonably warm clothing, leather jackets padded with white down, heads adorned in caps and goggles. 

And some were injured. Black soot caked one side of a man’s face, discolored by streaks of red dripping from cracked and burned skin. A woman limped past Sumi’s right, heading for a chair, blood-dyed cotton stuffing dangling out of a long gash on her leg. 

Now that the bell had been rung the room began to fill in earnest. Oji began to shout orders, instructing the able-bodied to begin clearing away the chairs and to set the tables in a circle about the central stairway. 

The village healer, Wangshu, was laying out white drapes on the tables that had already been set up, quickly evaluating the injured to place them in some kind of priority list. When he spotted the woman that Sumi had passed earlier he dropped what he was doing. 

“Sumi!” Wangshu called, pointing. “Get her over here, right now. On this table, head here, feet here, and then get me a lantern.” 

Sumi jumped to attention, turning around to find the unknown woman. She’d slumped to the floor with her back against the bar, head drooping low. Several boards of the floor beneath her were stained red with pooling blood. 

Sumi leapt forward and took her by the shoulders, preparing to lift her up. The woman’s eyes half-opened, a confused expression coming over her face. 

“Huh? What’re you doing? Issjusta scratch, alright?”

“One big-ass scratch you got there,” Sumi observed dryly. She ignored the woman’s lethargic attempts to shove her hands away and took her under the shoulders, pulling her up. She dragged her unceremoniously across the room to the table Wangshu had indicated, wincing at the trail of blood that marked her path through the room. 

Unfortunately, her newfound Hunter’s strength hadn’t come with a proportional increase in height, so she had to shoulder check several oblivious people out of the way as she went. She reached the table in short order, dragging the woman up onto it. 

Wangshu reached the table as she did, thin medical knife in hand. He began sawing at the woman’s leather pants, trying to free the wound. He swore under his breath as the thick material and its accompanying insulation snagged at his knife, slowing his progress. 

Sumi quickly pulled her dagger from her belt, offering it to him hilt-first. He took it without a word, setting his scalpel into a tray beside the woman that seemed to have appeared like magic. The knife made quick work of the pants, exposing the wound that ran from high up on the woman’s thigh down to her mid-calf. The whole wound was oozing blood, but one part in particular, near the center of the thigh, was practically gushing. 

“Lamp, Sumi.” Wangshu repeated tersely, unfolding a sterile linen rag from one of the many pockets on his loose-fitting shirt. Sumi jumped, berating herself for forgetting, then jogged several steps to snag a lamp that was dangling from the roof. She was back at his side in seconds, holding it as close as she could without impeding his movement. 

Wangshu had wiped the wound, clearing away the tangled bits of stained cotton and ragged leather. A thin layer of yellow fat was briefly visible above the red cords of muscle before the blood filled back in. Sumi kept her lamp studiously steady despite the increasingly raucous environment in the shelter. 

Something slammed into the building with an all-consuming bang , shaking the timbers around her until they creaked and groaned. Wangshu immediately bent over the woman, sheltering her wound from the dust that filtered down from above a moment later. 

“Set the lamp down there, Sumi. I suspect Souta will need your assistance more.” 

Sumi did as instructed, regretfully backing away.

The crowd around her was thick and chaotic, too dense for her to see more than a few people away. She shoved her way to an empty table and scrambled on top to see over the heads, searching for Souta. 

She spotted him huddling through the door, ushering in none other than her family. He was dressed in his full Hunting getup, spiked red carapace breastplate complimenting the massive green bow that hung off his back. Her father was holding Naoki while her mother was brushing his hair, keeping him purposely distracted. 

Sumi jumped off the table and began shoving her way through the crowd, affixing her shield to her right arm as she walked. She burst into the clear right in front of Souta, whose greeting was to point at her father.

“He brought your helmet, grab it. Don’t do anything without me.”
    “I’m a Hunter now, aren’t I?” Sumi reminded him, snatching the offered helmet from her father.

“So am I, and this is way above my paygrade. Get whatever you can together and meet me on the second floor.”

Sumi nodded, slipping her helmet on and buckling it while Souta took double-length strides through the crowd to reach the stairs. 

“Do you know what’s going on?” She asked her parents. 

“Not really.” Her father answered. “I saw an airship coming in a few hours ago, out of the east, then lost sight of it and forgot about it. Next thing I knew people started stumbling out of the jungle, half of them bleeding from somewhere. I guess something took the ship down and--” Another catastrophic bang shook the building, sparking a wave of shouts and curses from the townsfolk. “--And I guess it followed them here, it seems.”

Sumi mentally flipped through the handbooks Souta had had her memorize, trying to think of every flying Monster in the area that was territorial enough to attack an airship unprompted and big enough to bring one down. The only native flying Monsters she could think of that were large enough to qualify were the nearby roosting Rathalos and Rathian, but they didn’t fit the bill. They were still guarding their nest at this time of the year, and shouldn’t have risked a conflict for no reason, right?

Her mother interrupted her thoughts by grabbing her helmet, forcing her to look into her eyes. 

“You’re going to be careful, aren’t you?” 

“Wha-? I mean, yes obviously, unless--”

“No!” Her mother snapped, pulling Sumi closer. “You’re more important than every other person here, you understand? Your first and only priority is to get back to your father and I safely, alright? Promise me.”

“I can’t--” Sumi began to hedge.

“Promise me!” Her mother shouted, slapping the side of her helmet hard enough to set Sumi’s ears ringing. 

“Ow, ow! Alright, I promise.” Her mother’s hands dropped away. “I promise I’ll be back no matter what. Now look, I’ve got to go help Souta, okay?” 

“Okay. Okay.” Her mother repeated breathlessly, a panicked mantra. “You’ll be back safe. You’ll be back. Then it’s okay. You’ll come back to us.”

Her father clapped her on the shoulder, giving her nothing more than a firm nod. Sumi returned it, then dove back into the crowd. 

Chapter Text

Souta was one of a half-dozen people on the second floor of the building, and the only one armed among them. Two of them were in hushed conference with her mentor, heads bowed and eyes focused. Sumi recognized them as Guild members. They’d been part of the team that had helped recover her Great Jagras kill, having traveled here for the purpose. They were part butcher and part researcher, two very helpful things to be at any time when the village wasn’t under assault. 

The others in the room were hastily assembling a ballista in the center of the room, working with the frenzied energy of people who knew they had a very important job to do, yet had never expected to actually have to do it. Sumi recognized one of them as Daiku, the village’s carpenter, who she and her father often worked together with. He was too absorbed in his task to notice her entrance. 

Souta spotted her out of the corner of his eye and waved her over. She jogged across the room, trying to catch a glimpse at whatever-it-was through the thin windows. She saw only a flash of orange skin. 

One of the guild members, a short woman who was nonetheless still taller than Sumi, was in the middle of speaking. “--even with a coating I doubt you’ll be able to drive it off in time.”

“This building’s sturdy. We’ve got time.” Souta argued. Sumi noticed he was already sweating. 

The other, a spectacled young man, butted in. “An unacceptable risk. This is a frontier town. No relief will be coming, and you can’t deal with this on your own.”

“I’m not alone, though.” Souta pointed at Sumi. “We’ve got two Hunters, now.”

The spectacled man raised an eyebrow, appraising Sumi. She nodded her greetings, trying to project enough confidence to make up for the fact that her only piece of armor was an open-faced steel helmet. 

“She has Hunted exactly one Monster.” 

“Her first kill was a minor jagras, though. Mine was a boar, and I’d thought that was something, but she went and stabbed a jagras to death on her second day in the wilds. That’s pretty impressive, right?” 

Sumi kept quiet, figuring it best that she didn’t point out the many details of that story Souta had excluded.

“I recall that from your recommendation letter, and it is.” The spectacled man acknowledged. Another world-shaking boom rocked the building, this time followed by a deep and guttural roar. He pointed in the direction it came from. “ That is not a jagras, however. Face it, Souta. You’re outmatched.”

“So what do you want us to do, then?” Sumi asked, hoping to steer the conversation back to a more productive topic.

The other guildmember sneered, slugging her partner in the shoulder derisively. “He doesn’t have any idea. He’s just doing us all the favor of making sure we know how hopeless our situation is.”

Her partner sniffed, readjusting his glasses after the punch. “I’m not a leader, dear, but neither am I an imbecile. I’m simply encouraging our Hunter friend s here to try and think of an alternative plan to getting themselves killed.”

“What makes you so certain we’ll die, huh?” Sumi challenged. “Souta’s Hunted a Rathalos and a Rathian before. He can handle it, especially with my help.”

Souta sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Because that isn’t a Rath out there, Sumi. It’s a Tigrex.”

An ashen look spread over the two guildmember’s faces at the name, as if merely being reminded of what they faced was draining their blood away. Sumi pursed her lips, racking her brain. After a few moments, she shrugged. 

“Okay, I give up. I have no idea what a Tigrex is.”

“That’s because they aren’t supposed to be anywhere near here. We haven’t covered them at all.” Souta flipped open a pouch, pulling out his notebook. “I’ve got a sketch somewhere here…” 

Sumi rolled her eyes, leaving Souta to go press her face up against a window. 

The Tigrex was pacing up and down the village’s main street, gargantuan claws gouging a rut in the mud. It was quadrupedal, with four equally sized legs attached to a barrel chest, colored by orange pebbled skin. Its forelimbs had diminutive wings protruding up and away from the ankles, connected by tissues to the elbow joint, though at first glance they looked vestigial. It carried itself low to the ground, like a lizard, with a tail almost as long as its body that tapered into long spikes. Its head was thick and brutal, with malevolent eyes set beneath a deep brow ridge that rose from its short neck. As it turned back toward the tavern it let its mouth hang open, revealing dozens of triangular teeth. If it had rested its chin on the ground its eyes would have been level with Sumi’s shoulder. It was likely sixty feet long from head to tail, possibly longer. 

    Sumi pulled away from the window, her distaste for the pessimistic guild member softening a great deal. That thought was apparently reflected by her expression, as he gave her a subtle nod with a smile as smug as it was sickly. 

    “Okay. You have any ideas, then?” Sumi asked the woman guildmember. 

    She deflated. “You wouldn’t happen to be a village of miners, by any chance? With enough tools and supplies to dig our way back to civilization?”

    “Rice farmers, mostly. Sorry.”

    “I expected as much, considering, you know, all the rice fields. In that case…” She went silent for a moment, letting only the sound of the ballista assembly some feet away fill the empty air. Sumi tapped her foot, thinking. The Tigrex paced outside, occasionally letting out a low growl that filtered through the walls. 

    “Why’s it attacking, anyway? What does it want?”

    The male guild member- Sumi really should learn his name- responded with a shrug. “It must have taken down the airship, right? Then followed the survivors here.” 

    “You mean nobody’s asked?” Souta demanded, looking around the room. All present shuffled their feet. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Souta swore, jogging for the stairs. 

    Sumi tried to rub at her temples before recalling that she had a helmet on. She could feel a headache brewing. 

    “Alright, let’s clear some stuff up. You two, what’s your name?”

    “Hidari.” The man answered. 

    “Migi.” The woman offered. 

    “Alright. Since you’re both guildmembers I’ll assume you know more about Tigrexes than I do?”

    “Safe assumption.” Hidari replied. Sumi narrowed her eyes at him, but let the comment slide. 

    Migi answered for him. “You’ve seen what it looks like. As for its behavior? They’re often thought to be being remarkably aggressive for two reasons." Her voice took on the tone of a lecturer, obviously reciting a long-since memorized passage from some dusty tome. "The first is that, when presented with a challenge, they prefer to intimidate rather than engage. They use shockingly loud roars to damage eardrums and warn others of their presence, and can even flush their upper bodies with blood to change shades in an impressive display.”

    “The other reason is that they’re remarkably aggressive.” Hidari butted in. “As soon as they’ve decided to fight they prefer a constant attack to any other strategy, hoping to either wear down or kill their prey before they can get a lucky hit in.” 

    Sumi processed that quietly for a few seconds, then came to a decision. “I liked the first part more.” 

    Souta came back up the stairs with a burly man holding onto his armor for support, breathing hard and limping as he made his way. The man was dressed in similar style to the rest of the airship crew members, but with noticeably finer clothing. His leather jacket was thick and shiny, and he wore a cap that was crisp and well-pressed despite the retreat through the jungle he had made with the rest of the crew. He straightened when he reached the top of the stairs, forcing away his grimace as he made a formal introductory bow. Sumi and the guildmembers returned it.

    “I am Captain Hikosen. I thank you and your village for your current hospitality.” 

    “You’re welcome, Captain.” Sumi answered, since she was the only one being addressed that was actually native to the village. “You happen to know why the hospitality was, uh, necessary?” She hooked a thumb towards a window, beyond which the Tigrex continued its pacing. 

    Captain Hikosen pursed his lips. “As for the beast’s specific tenacity in the following of our surviving band, I cannot attest anything beyond wild fancy or superfluous theories. The behavior of such monstrosities falls closer to your area of expertise. The circumstances that brought us to its initial attention are much clearer, though.” 

    Sumi nodded as thoughtfully as she could, then crossed her arms behind her back and widened her stance like she’d seen some old veterans do. He seemed like the type to appreciate that. 

“It was approximately oh-nine-hundred when the barrelman reported a sighting of a wyvern high off the 11 o’clock on an apparent intercept course. We readjusted our heading accordingly, but maneuvers were limited by the prevailing wind. I elected to descend to ensure the wyvern would pass well overhead, but the wyvern immediately entered a shallow dive that maintained the collision course. It was at this point that I ordered all hands to action stations.”

Souta was nodding like this all made perfect sense to him, so Sumi didn’t interrupt. “At oh-nine-hundred-twenty, with the wyvern at a distance of seven hundred meters or so, we launched our standard deterrents. Both Snappers and Flashies detonated well, succeeding in disorienting the wyvern. It was at this point that the beast was confidently identified as a Rathian, which prompted further evasive maneuvers. I’ve survived several Rathian encounters before and had found them to prefer an attack from beneath, seeking to disembowel what they see as either a rival or prey. It was under this assumption that I descended to tree-top level, to hopefully present a less tempting target.” His military demeanor wavered then, a different kind of pained expression flitting across his face. “That was a mistake. The Rathian proceeded to land upon the envelope, piercing a number of the aft gas bags, forcing a sharp upward tilt. With no remaining altitude to recover or engage repairs the hull became quickly entangled with the tree tops, forcing us to an abrupt halt. It…” 

He took a breath, working his jaw. “Several deck hands were thrown overboard at the initial impact. Those that remained on the ship fared little better, and we suffered a number of casualties and injuries, myself included. I recovered my senses some time later and gave the order to abandon ship, but the crew had already begun the process. I began evacuating once I had a report that the lower deck was clear of the living. It was at this time that the Rathian began acting most peculiarly.”

“Oh?” Souta intoned. “How so?”

“I am a seasoned captain, Sir Hunter. This was not my first ship lost to a flying wyvern. In other such scenarios the beasts have invariably either retreated once they have realized the subject of their ire was not a true creature or once they’ve had their fill of food. This Rathian, however, circled back. With outstretched claws it flew on and, just as I began to slip over the edge of the deck, landed, as if to roost.”

“Wait, what?” Souta interrupted. “It landed on your ship? And it actually fit between the envelope and the deck? Why would it do that?” 

“I do not know why, Sir Hunter, only that it did. And the Listless is-- was-- of the latest design, far larger than most airships you’re likely to be accustomed to. And I saw nothing of what it did next, as I was already descending the rope to the jungle floor below.”

“Wouldn’t a Rathian sink the ship, though?” Sumi asked. “I’ve only seen one once, but it was probably the same one that attacked you. I can’t imagine any airship could carry that much weight. 

“With the evacuation of the crew, subsequent collision and spilling of cargo, the ship had begun to rise once more. It seemed the Rathian was just the right weight to even the load, leaving the ship at neutral buoyancy some twenty meters over the canopy.” 

“Alright, I’ll take your word for it. As for the rest of the story, that sounds awful. I’m sorry.” Sumi offered. Captain Hikosen’s lips grew thinner, but he nodded his acknowledgement of the sympathy. “But that doesn’t explain the Tigrex outside right now. If anything, it sounds like we should be under attack by a Rathian, not some invasive Monster.”

“ That beast began to follow us on the subsequent journey to your village. We crashed luckily close, only an hour or so’s hard march away, but the extensive injuries of our crew necessitated a far slower pace. Some time later, I’m unsure as to how long exactly, one of our crew noticed the beast trailing behind us. It was following some hundred feet back, keeping low to the ground, head tilted almost like a confused puppy. The sighting naturally sent quite a fright through our impromptu caravan, and we proceeded to your village at the fastest possible pace.”

“It didn’t attack you at all?” Souta clarified. “All of your people’s injuries are from the crash?”

“Correct. When we first got to the clearing here we thought the beast had given up the chase for some indeterminable reason, but we proceeded to this shelter just in case. A wise decision, it would seem.” 

The captain was wobbling on his feet now. Souta noticed this and helped him sit down, using the stairs as a chair. Captain Hikosen didn’t say a further word, but gratitude was clear in his demeanor. 

Souta came over to Sumi and the guildmembers with a stormy look on his face. 

“Did that make any more sense to you guys than it did to me?” He asked quietly. 

“You mean the sailor talk or the thing with the Tigrex?” Sumi said. 

“The Tigrex, the Rathian, all of it. Why did the Rathian attack unprovoked like that, why did it land on the ship, why didn’t the Tigrex attack, and why did it follow them all the way here?”

“I suspect there’s more to the story we don’t know.” Hidari suggested. 

“Oh, sure, because he has so many reasons to lie, doesn’t he?” Migi retorted. 

“It’s still the nesting season for the Rathian and Rathalos, isn’t it, Souta?” Sumi asked, hoping to cut off yet another argument before it could gain steam. 

“The tail end of it, yeah. They’d likely just laid their eggs when we saw them the first time, and it’s been about two months since then. Would be close to hatching now, if they didn’t already.” 

“Think they accidentally flew over the nest, then? Got them too riled up?”

“The Rathian was spotted several kilometers out, though, wasn’t it?” Migi reminded the group. “It didn’t fly up from below, it sought the airship out specifically.”

Souta grunted, conceding the point. 

Sumi scratched underneath her helmet straps, racking her mind. At least two fully-grown Monsters were acting extremely abnormally, something that was never good. If the Rathian’s mate was swept up in whatever-it-was, they could have the brewing of a disaster on their hands. 

The Rathian and Rathalos had been known to Sumi and Souta for months and they’d never been a problem. Their nest was far enough from the village that they left it well enough alone, and Sumi and Souta had returned the favor. The only odd man out was the Tigrex.

“Souta, can I see your sketch of a Tigrex?”

“Sure.” He tossed her his notebook. He had given no particularly sensible organizational structure to its pages, having once explained to her that he categorized Monsters more by “vibe” than any taxonomical definition, but Sumi had become familiar enough with the illogical workings of her teacher’s mind to find the Tigrex’s entry in short order. 

She took the book to the small window slit, gazing out at the Monster and comparing it to Souta’s sketches. 

The Tigrex in the journal was of similar dimensions to the one she saw in front of her, and at first seemed as indistinguishable as any two creatures of the same species were expected to be. But the longer she looked, the more she began to notice. The Tigrex in the drawing’s chest and stomach was fuller, closer to the ground, and its joints were less pronounced. Souta’s drawing had his trademark excellence in shading and detail, complemented by the descriptive labeling of patterns and coloration in the margins, which greatly aided the comparison. She waved Souta over, handing him his notebook. She wanted his unbiased opinion before she voiced her own theory. 

Souta stood and patiently examined the Tigrex, occasionally referring back to his notes. After a few minutes, he pulled away. 

“You see what I saw?” Sumi asked.

“It’s gaunt.”

“Eyes are sunken.” 

“Joints are protruding, hide is discolored, and its claws are yellowing. All signs of malnourishment.”

“Did you notice its back?” Sumi asked. Souta turned back to the window, licking his lips in concentration. 

“Claw marks all along its back. Somewhat faded, partially healed, so probably a few days old.”

“And are they all from the same Monster?”

He squinted. “No. Two separate spacings, two separate claw sizes. One mostly attacked its upper body, the other its rear. And its front right claws, see there?”

“No, I didn’t. What is it?”

“They’re chipped. Half as long as the ones on its left.”

“That settles it, then, doesn’t it?”

“How?” Came Captain Hikosen’s voice. “It’s been in a fight or two. And? What Monster hasn’t?”

Souta answered. “It’s malnourished, desperate, which is probably what forced it so far out of its native habitat. It’s got wounds from two similar species attacking it, and it followed your group right after you’d just been attacked by a Rathian. I don’t think it thought you were prey, Captain. I think it hoped you were an ally.” 

“Are you saying that you think the beast was asking for our help , Sir Hunter?” 

Hidari piped up. “Probably nothing that altruistic, Captain Hikosen. It would be better to call it an alliance of convenience, something that occasionally happens among grown Monsters that find themselves facing a superior threat. A Tigrex may be easily capable of defending itself from a lone Rathian or Rathalos, but the tables are turned when it’s outnumbered. Perhaps the Rathian had been pursuing the Tigrex already and, as a result, been too incensed to avoid attacking your ship.”

“And then,” Migi picked up, “Once the Tigrex saw your group both be attacked by and survive the Rathian’s attack, it hoped you would back it up if it got attacked again. I’d guess that if the Rathian or Rathalos were to come to the village now the Tigrex would give up its assault on the building entirely, expecting you to help it fend them off. After all, you didn’t challenge it in the jungle, did you?”

“Of course not!” The captain spluttered. “It would have torn us to shreds without a second thought!”

Souta gave a chuckle. “One of the saving graces of civilization is that it only takes one encounter with a Hunter to convince a Monster that every human they meet is just as much of a threat. Working under that assumption, that Tigrex thought it had just found an entire pack of allies. It must be pretty desperate now that it’s been ‘abandoned’ by you. Strange, I know, but it’s the best I can think of.” 

The captain mulled that over. “...Is it strange that I now feel some peculiar obligation to actually adhere to those terms? That I’d somehow think myself a failure if I let the beast fall to the Rathian or its mate?” 

Souta smiled grimly. “You’re an airship Captain, Captain. If you didn’t have at least some level of suicidal chivalry in you I’d accuse you of being a fake.”

“Ha!” He bellowed, the first crack in his overly formal demeanor Sumi had seen. “I see you’ve spent your fair share of time on ships, haven’t you, Sir Hunter?”

“Just enough to know what to expect, Captain.” 

“Not to interrupt the good time, guys, but there’s still one question we haven’t answered. Why did the Rathian land on the ship? And why was it so furious at the Tigrex in the first place?”

“Does it matter?” Asked the voice of Daiku, the village’s carpenter. He was standing next to the fully assembled ballista with a sheen of sweat on his brow. “All we need to know is how to get it to leave, and I think I just put the finishing touches on the solution.” He patted the ballista proudly. 

The fully assembled construction was admittedly impressive. It was longer than a man and came up to Sumi’s neck in height. The bolts it shot, which had been laid out beside it in neat rows, were as thick as a fist and taller than a man. Only its complex arrangement of gears and winches could allow a person to draw the thick string back. It wasn’t attached to the floor, and could be carried up to the window slits by the four handles positioned at its four corners. 

Captain Hikosen, however, was less than impressed. He forced himself to his feet, steadying himself with the stair’s railing. “You’d kill the beast?” He demanded indignantly. 

Daiku, a thoroughly provincial colonist who likely hadn’t heard the word ‘chivalry’ in his life, scratched his head in confusion. “Uh… yeah? That’s what this thing is for, isn’t it?”

“It came here for our assistance! It could have slaughtered every one of my crew with hardly an effort, and it chose not to! I will not allow such a dark blot on my record.”

“Don’t think it’s up to you, man. Pretty sure that’s their call.” Daiku reminded him, referring to Sumi and Souta. Captain Hikosen turned to them, his face reddening.

“Woah there, Captain.” Souta patted the air in a calming gesture. “I don’t think we could kill that Tigrex no matter how hard we tried. It may be malnourished, but it’s still way out of our league. That ballista’ll piss it off, sure, but not much more than that.” Captain HIkosen seemed as reassured by that fact as Daiku seemed disappointed. “The fact that it’s still here means it thinks the Rathian or Rathalos are still going to come for it. Right now, the Tigrex might kill us all. But we’re in a wooden bunker and Rathalos and Rathian spit fire. They’d definitely kill us all.”

“And besides,” Migi added, ”I really think you’re overestimating how much the Tigrex is on our side. It’s as much our friend as a hurricane is when you’re fighting a wildfire. Convenient in the moment, but probably a bigger problem in the end.” 

“You know what?” Sumi loudly asked the room in general. They turned to her. “I’m tired of sitting here and guessing. It’s time to do something. We can sit in our hole and wait to either get dug up by the Tigrex or fried by the Rathian, or we can do something. So what are we going to do?” 

Souta tapped his foot, then let out a dramatic sigh. “Alright. Want to run for it?”

“To where?” Hidari asked. 

“If we want to figure out what all these damn Monsters want from each other, why don’t Souta and I head to where it started? Captain, you know where your ship crashed?”

“I could estimate, of course, but it was still buoyant when I left. It may have drifted quite a ways, assuming the Rathian hasn’t left it behind, in which case it may be halfway to the stars by now.”

“I figure we’d want to go to the crash site first anyway, see if we can find any explanations there. We’ll decide what to do after that.”

“Works for me.” Souta agreed. “Any objections?”

“How you going to get past the big boy out there?” Daiku asked. 

“Walk very quietly, and if that doesn’t work, run very fast.”

The plan was met with less-than-enthusiastic grumbling, but no alternative was provided. Sumi and Souta set about preparing for their trip, double-checking their weapons and supplies. Souta raided the tavern below for rations, then pounded down a mug of mead for good measure. Sumi didn’t have any armor apart from her helmet, so they’d already decided their first stop would be her home, where she’d left it the night before. A few of the airship crew offered her pieces of their regular attire like thick pants, elbow pads, and knee pads, which helped somewhat, and she managed to find a belt among the crowd to stuff with whatever bandages and other supplies the doc felt he could spare. 

The Tigrex continued its periodic pounding on the walls of the shelter throughout the process, but the wooden tavern continued to hold strong. Eventually Souta and Sumi stood in front of the tavern’s only door, as prepared as they could be. Her father was off to her right, watching the Tigrex’s pacing through a window slit. It had dug a trench in the dirt where it continued to tread back and forth, letting them know exactly when it would be as far away as it would ever get. Unfortunately for them, that spot was still within full view of the door. 

Her father held up three fingers, counting down. When he hit zero Sumi and Souta pulled on the foot-thick door, easing it open just enough to slip through. 

After the darkness of the lantern-lit tavern the afternoon sun was positively blinding. She shaded her eyes, watching the Tigrex to see if it reacted to their crouched exit. The door creaked shut behind her. 

The Tigrex’s eye snapped to them in an instant, the Monster freezing in its pacing. Sumi held her breath as she gingerly began to step away, moving as slow as she could without losing her balance. 

The Tigrex’s mouth snapped open, emitting a guttural roar loud enough to throw a cloud of dust into the air. 

“GO!” Souta yelled, taking off in a sprint beside her. Sumi didn’t need to be told twice, already pumping her legs as fast as they could move. 

Souta was taller than her, more experienced, but he was dressed head-to-toe in heavy armor, so they kept a fairly even pace as they barreled down the village’s only road in a blind panic.

The Tigrex began to lope after them, its massive bulk taking time to accelerate to a sprint. Sumi heard an audible snap-crack and turned back to see splinters of wood shattering on the front left forelimb of the Monster. Daiku had hit his first ballista shot. 

The Tigrex stumbled slightly, attention briefly split between the prey in the open and aggressor in cover. A moment’s hesitation led to it deciding to turn back to the tavern, leaping at the second floor window with mouth stretched wide. It slammed into the wood, unable to get a grip. 

Scrabbling, it roared in frustration, loud enough to force Sumi to clap her hands over her ears even from several hundred feet away. 

Daiku answered with a second snap-crack , wooden shrapnel detonating in the Tigrex’s mouth. It fell away from the wall, dragging a furious claw down the side that left half-foot gouges along the wall. 

Sumi and Souta kept up their sprint, heading for her forge. The Tigrex would only ignore them for so long, and they very much didn’t want to find out the exact figure. 

They thumped across the small bridge in front of her house, heaved themself up the small hill, and scooped up pieces of her armor nearly without breaking stride. She left behind the half-repaired leg piece as she cursed herself for leaving her Hunter’s belt at Souta’s instead of home, and then they were gone. 

They sprinted down the far side of the hill and cleared the other side of the stream in a single bound, armor pieces jangling loudly in their arms. 

Sumi heard another furious bellow, much closer than it should be. She glanced behind to find the Tigrex clawing its way over her childhood home, talons tearing away its roof like paper. 

“Down!” Souta called, forcing her attention back in front of her. The tree-wall boundary of the village was just in front of her, broken only by a small hole dug by some vermin or another. 

Souta forced his way through just before she reached it, falling down on her stomach. She shoved her bundle of armor pieces through, where they were quickly knocked to the side by Souta, then squirmed through herself. 

The ground was shaking around her in the rhythm of a gallop. She squeezed through just as a foot larger than her body slammed down behind her, accompanied by yet another furious roar. The tree wall began to shake and wrench, slowly being torn apart by the Tigrex. 

They scooped up the pieces of her armor and resumed their sprint into the familiar jungle, trying to steer themselves along the paths in the vague direction of the crash site. It would be a while yet before they would feel comfortable slowing their pace.

Chapter Text

Jogging through the jungle with one eye turned to the sky, the other to the ground, Sumi could recognize that she should be outright petrified at this moment. Her family and everyone she had ever known was trapped in a single building, stalked by a predator that could kill them as easily as she could a line of ants. There were likely two more similarly powerful predators that would soon be joining the fray, and once they did the odds would be so long that it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call them impossible. She should be sick to her stomach, eyes teary, mentally exhausted. 

But honestly? 

She was exhilarated. She slipped on her chest piece while moving at a light jog, then worked at her arms. The entire time she had a stupid grin on her face. She had her sword in her left hand, her shield strapped to her right, and a Hunter’s helm strapped to her head. 

The forest was alight with life around her. Birds chattered and squawked in a hundred voices, flitting from tree to tree to avoid the grasping claws of arboreal predators. Two months in the jungle kept her steps steady and sure, her body having adjusted to the twisting paths and tripping roots that snaked their way through the jungle. She glanced from left to right and saw creature after creature, but now, instead of being bewildered by their variety, she understood. 

The Kelbi that bounded away from her path chose their routes not at random, but quite carefully, preferring the trails with cover that camouflaged them best while still leaving enough space for them to maneuver. The baffling bugs that marched in eclectic patterns at the base of trees she passed weren’t simply moving without thought. They were herding smaller creatures, visible only with a magnifying glass, toward their nests where they could be grown and bred like cattle. The multi-colored beetles she stepped to the side to avoid crushing weren’t oddly cooperative members of different species, but caste dimorphic examples of the same creature, grown from birth to perform specific tasks to exacting perfection. 

When she’d first begun her training in the jungle she’d worried that her studies would strip away the appeal of the unknown, but that had been naive. The world around her was more complex than any one person could hope to understand, an impossible puzzle where each piece was made of smaller fragments in an ever-descending fractal. And even if, someday, through some presently incomprehensible means, she could understand every bit and piece in perfect totality, nothing would change. That would just mean the portrait had finally been completed. 

As she and Souta continued through the jungle, sweat beading on their brows and staining their clothes, she couldn’t help but grin. This was what being a Hunter was. She’d been so worried that she’d be wrong about the life a Hunter lived, that it wasn’t as glamorous as all the stories made it out to be, that the more cynical members of the village were right and that she’d find some secret misery hidden underneath all the fancy and whimsy. But no. They’d been wrong. 

Sure, she hadn’t expected the paperwork, or the complex taxonomical tables and the debates over their usage. She hadn’t imagined the days spent on hands and knees, counting the number of spots on a butterfly’s wing to see if it would cure or kill her. She hadn’t truly understood just how tired she was capable of becoming, or just how weak her limbs could grow. Like everything else, there was more to being a Hunter than she’d ever been able to imagine without experiencing it herself. 

But right now? When she was barreling through the jungle, feeling the harmless whip-cracks of foliage snapping against her armor, cutting her way through tangled vines with her left hand and shoving aside debris with her right, literally carving her own path to a goal that wasn’t just one she chose, but one that really mattered ? 

Every fiber of her being knew that she’d made the right choice. She’d heard stories of Hunters too old to fight and explore, still forcing themselves out into the wilds day-after-day until their body collapsed beneath them. She’d thought them idiots, stubborn geriatrics who didn’t know what was good for them. Now, though, she understood. And she knew that someday she’d be the same. 

Sumi spotted a particularly tall tree ahead, one that looked like its highest branches would rise over the canopy. Breathless from the pace they’d maintained, she simply pointed it out to Souta, who nodded. She split off from him, heading for the tree. 

She sheathed her sword as she approached, grabbing a fistful of the leafless vines that intertwined the trunk. She began pulling herself upward, careful to support her weight with as many points of contact as possible. She may be small, but her armor was heavy, and no single vine could have taken her weight. When she was about halfway up the tree the vines thinned temporarily, so she slipped her knife from her belt and embedded it sideways in the tree, first using it as a handhold, then a foothold. From there she could grab one of the lower branches with her right arm, which took all of her weight. She pried the knife loose with her feet, careful not to drop it as she pulled herself up to sit on the branch. 

She retrieved her knife and slipped it back into her belt, then began pulling herself up through the branches. The lower branches were sparser, so she occasionally had to leap to grab the next one, but they quickly became denser. Soon she was climbing up the tree as easily as she could a ladder, bringing her to the top within minutes. 

Her chest was heaving as she pulled herself up to the top of the tree, mouth parched despite the oppressively thick humidity that pervaded the jungle. She unscrewed her canteen and took several long droughts of water while she shielded her eyes to survey the horizon. 

The village’s clearing was little more than a slight discoloration at this distance, visible far behind her. The jungle canopy rose and fell with the hills that hid beneath it, forming peaks and valleys that stretched outward for as far as the eye could see. 

In some places towers of jutting rock rose from the landscape, forming the edges of intimidating plateaus that reached higher even than her present perch. Beneath one such cliffside, she knew, was the wyvern nest. She’d been there once, unwittingly, on her first day in the jungle. The memory was as fresh in her mind as was possible and would likely stay that way for the rest of her life. The Great Jagras, the eggs, the descending Rathalos, and the frenzied escape. It had been as exciting as it had been terrifying. 

She kept scanning the horizon, searching for any sign of the airship, the Listless. It didn’t take long. 

Sumi hadn’t ever seen an airship outside her mother’s paintings, but she quickly decided Captain Hikosen hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said it had been larger than she’d expect. Her unfamiliarity with its size made it difficult to judge the distance, but she could hardly make out any detail aside from the vague shape of its balloon and the small gondola that hung beneath it, suspended by seemingly invisible wires. 

The Listless was drifting in the wind near a distant plateau, spinning slowly. Sumi squinted at the distant gray blob, willing her eyes to sharpen their view. Her willpower failed her, though, and she reluctantly descended the tree. 

“Souta!” She called as she climbed. “Did you bring your telescope?”

“What?” Came the muffled response from below. She rolled her eyes, descending further, until she sat on one of the lower branches, within eyesight of him. 

“I said, did you bring your telescope?”

He gave her a wounded look. “‘Course I did, Sumi. Did you spot the Listless ?” 

“Yeah. Way, way off to the Southeast. Too far to get a good look at it. Toss me your telescope.”

He raised a suspicious eyebrow but dug through his pockets all the same. He brought out the bronze collapsible telescope. “You better catch this.”

“Or what? It’ll be more broken?”

“As broken as your nose when I’m done with you if you drop it, yeah. Ready? On three.” He counted down, then tossed it through the air. The small capsule extended partially in mid-flight, arcing to a stop perfectly in front of Sumi. She snatched it out of the air, pocketing it. 

“Thanks. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Take your time.” Souta waved, dropping to sit against the tree. “I could use a break.”

Sumi climbed the tree once more, finding a convenient perch at the top. She slipped the telescope out of her belt pocket, putting it to her eye and pointing it at the airship. 

The telescope had a jarring crack that split the center of the lens, obscuring much of her vision, but Souta had made very clear his unwillingness to replace even a single piece of the device. She adjusted the scope until the airship came into clear-ish view. 

She still couldn’t make out fine details, but it was better than before. She could spot the ropes that attached the gondola to the envelope, noting how they were crossed in triangle patterns for stability. The envelope, which had looked like a single mass before, was laced with stitches that connected its various parts, a superstructure of some kind visible beneath. She could see fins at one end, nothing at the other. 

She also noted the enormous wyvern on the deck, resting in a curled-up ball with tail gently drooping off the side. The entire ship was tilted by the weight of the Rathian, but it didn’t seem to be losing altitude. 

Sumi pulled the telescope away, scanning the sky for signs of Rathalos, the Rathian’s mate. Only distant flocks of birds drew her attention. She didn’t know if its absence should reassure or worry her. 

She slithered her way back down the tree to Souta, dropping to the ground. 

“You see it?”

“Yeah. Southeast, drifting eastward. Weird thing is, the Rathian’s still on the deck. Curled up like a big green cat, actually.”

“Huh.” 

“I know, right? Anything in your books that mentions Rathians squatting in an airship?”

“Not that I’ve ever read, and you’d think something like that would’ve stuck in my memory.”

“Any theories, at least? Because I’ve got nothing.”

Souta chewed his lip. “Hmmm… Maybe it likes the view?”

Sumi rolled her eyes but didn’t voice an insult. It wasn’t like she had a better idea. She did quietly file the theory away to mock later, though, whenever she came up with a better idea. 

They set off in the direction of the Listless , eyes turned to the skies. They tried to walk at an angle to the ship, to come out ahead of its slowly drifting course. That was made difficult by the jungle’s restricted pathways, which forced them into an inconveniently elaborate route. Trees that broke the pattern by rising above the others were fairly rare, so all they had to go off of were the prevailing winds, visible by the gentle bend of the treetops. 

Fortunately, the winds seemed to be taking the Listless closer to them, rather than farther, so the afternoon wasn’t quite over yet when they began to spot it between the thin gaps in the trees. 

The Listless was simultaneously more and less impressive up close than it had been through the lens of a cracked spyglass. Its envelope was truly massive, certainly more than two hundred feet long. The thin beams underneath the gray cloth pressed a symmetrical pattern into its skin, coming to a narrowed point at the front, with a similar taper on the back end. The rear of the ship had three great fins that protruded outward on the sides and top, connected by long cables snaking along the envelope to the gondola. Sumi assumed they were for steering, like the rudder of the river boats she was more familiar with. 

The less impressive portion of it came from the damage. The long ropes which held the Gondola to the envelope were frayed, even snapped in some places, leaving the gondola at an awkward angle. Some portions of the envelope’s top were sagging in, pierced by the Rathian’s claws, though obviously not enough to sink the ship. Knotted ropes trailed from all sides, dragging along the canopy, having been used by the crew to evacuate. The entire assembly gave her the impression of a wounded beast, barely limping along. 

And then, of course, there was the Rathian. Its tail swung idly off the right side of the gondola, long spikes occasionally scraping along the hull. From her current angle she couldn’t see its head, but she could imagine it. As big as a wheelbarrow, with teeth longer than knives, guided by beady reptilian eyes. She pressed a nervous hand to her steel breastplate, wondering if it would withstand the bite of a Rathian in the same way it could the claws of a Great Jagras. 

She doubted it. 

While the size of the Listless made its pace seem lethargic, it was in reality drifting along at a fairly decent clip. Faster than a walking pace, at least, and it wasn’t like they were strolling through an open field. Sumi had to clear a path through the jungle with her machete, only occasionally having the good fortune of finding a clear trail that happened to be going in the vaguely correct direction. Just following the thing was exhausting. 

As they got closer to being directly under the Listless Sumi began to hear an odd noise. A chirping squeak, high enough pitched to carry well over the distance between her and the ship. It almost reminded her of…

“Do you hear that?” Sumi huffed as she clawed her way through the jungle.

“Yeah,” Souta replied in a half-whisper. “Almost sounds like a baby bird.”

“A really big baby bird. You don’t think…?”

“There’s a baby Rathian up there? Maybe. As far as I know no one’s gotten close to a juvenile Rath and lived to write about it. We’ve got no idea how they raise them, how long they keep them in the nest for, or anything. If that's a baby up there we’re going in blind.”

Sumi started to groan, then a thought occurred to her. “So, you’re saying we’d be the first Hunters to ever observe a Rathian with its young?”

“I guess so.”

“Huh.” Sumi continued her hacking path through the jungle. They were pulling ahead of the Listless. “That wouldn’t be bad for a second Hunt, would it?”

“Didn’t take long for you to end up a glory hound, did it?” Souta slapped her on the back. “Remember, though. Our first priority is figuring out what’s got all these Monsters riled up. The village has plenty of food in the tavern, but those walls won’t last forever. We get in, find out what we can, and get out. Keep it simple.”

“Yeah, no problem. Just a simple recon up fifty feet of rope into a moving airship, where an abnormally behaving Rathian is potentially nesting, something that’s never been seen in person, and then trek back through however-many miles of jungle to a starving Tigrex which may or may not be in the middle of fighting a Rathalos.”

“Glad you’ve got such a clear handle on things. Always helps to understand the plan.”

“Even when the plan sucks?”

“ Especially when the plan sucks.”

They’d managed to gain about a ship-length of distance in front of the Listless . Sumi could see the evacuation ropes trailing along the canopy, occasionally snagging on branches. Most of the time the momentum of the ship broke the offending branch free, but she saw at least one rope get pulled tighter and tighter, twisting the gondola slightly until the pressure grew too great and it broke with a loud snap. It wasn’t an encouraging sight. 

“See that tall tree up ahead?” Souta asked, pointing. 

“Think it’ll pass close enough?” 

“Hopefully. Let’s give it a shot.”

They picked up the pace, heading for a single spindly tree that stuck out just a little bit higher than the ones around it. Souta reached it first, stabbing his knife into the trunk and beginning to pull himself up. Sumi followed close behind, wrapping the tree in a bear hug to begin shimmying her way up. She was thankful that climbing trees was what she and half the village had spent their childhood practicing, because her armor made the feat incredibly awkward. 

They made their way to the top with perhaps a half-minute to spare, both perched like birds on the highest branch that could support their weight. It still bowed under them. The Listless creeped forward, pushed by the same steady wind that rocked their perch. 

They could quickly see that none of the escape ropes were going to pass close enough to grab with an outstretched arm. 

“You’re going to have to jump for a rope. Think you can do it?” Souta whispered.

“I’m going to put my chances at a solid ‘probably’.” Sumi answered, eyes locked on the ropes, studiously avoiding a glance at the drop beneath her.

“Good enough for me. We’ll want to jump together, on three, or else this branch’ll snap back. Ready?”

“Probably.” Sumi repeated with a nervous chuckle. “Think I’d survive a fall from here if I miss?”

Souta looked down appraisingly, then shrugged. “Probably.” 

Sumi resisted the urge to slug him.

They passed into the shadow of the gargantuan Listless, awaiting the gondola. Sumi picked a rope in her mind’s eye, the one that was hopefully passing closest. She adjusted her feet on the branch. Souta began his count.

“One.” Sumi let go with her right hand. 

“Two.” Sumi let go with her left hand, balancing in place.

“Three!” 

Sumi’s legs shot out, propelling her through the air. Souta angled away from her, heading for the next closest rope. The entire world narrowed down to a single line. One rope, knotted, heading upward. 

Sumi missed the rope with her outstretched hands, then the cord thumped into her breastplate. She flailed wildly as she felt her arc steepen, the rope’s knots hitting her on the chin as she fell. She desperately wrapped every limb she had around the rope, even tucking her chin in to grab it. 

Her fall came to a jarring halt, teeth clacking together loudly in her mouth. She stayed perfectly still for a long moment, breathing hard. She realized that at some point she’d squeezed her eyes shut, so she slowly forced them open. 

She was about three quarters of the way down the rope, lower than where she’d jumped from. Souta was above her and off to her left, dangling off the rope like it was the most natural thing in the world. Unwilling to yell when the Rathian was so close, she could only use her expression to show her extreme displeasure. It seemed the message was understood, as he stuck his tongue out back at her. 

She shuffled her feet until they were standing on one of the rope’s knots. She began to shakily reach her way upward, hand over hand, until she could pull herself up to the next knot. She tried to only let one foot off the rope at a time, but without it pinched between her legs it simply slipped to the side and out from under her boots, forcing a startled gasp out of her. She was forced to hold her entire weight up with her arms until she could raise her feet to the next knot. Climbing the precarious rope, which swung slightly in the breeze, reminded her of an inchworm working its way up a leaf. She had to imagine that the caterpillar's hearts weren’t beating quite as fast when they did it, though. 

It took several minutes of exceedingly careful climbing to reach the bottom of the gondola, where she could finally grab onto a much sturdier ladder that had been carved into the wall of the airship. 

Souta, of course, had already been waiting for her, and he’d even managed to scramble his way to be right next to her. The wind was louder up here, so he leaned close to whisper to her. 

“We poke our heads over the side, see what we can, then pop back down to make a plan. Got it?”

Sumi nodded. They began to pull themselves upward towards the deck, where a Rathian waited.

Chapter Text

If it wouldn’t have gotten her killed Sumi would have sworn when she poked her head over the deck. Thankfully the Rathian was still curled up in a peaceful ball, but now she could see what was at its center. 

A smaller wyvern slept fitfully in the curve of the Rathian’s tail, sporting a mottled coat of red and green. Though newborn, it was already as long as Sumi. Its head was softer and rounder than its mother’s, lacking the distinctive chin spike that it would presumably grow as an adult. She could see short and stubby wings, clearly incapable of propelling the infant wyvern through the air. 

It was also, she noted, shivering. Its breaths came in fitful spurts, with a nasally whistle that didn’t sound entirely healthy. Its eyes fluttered for a moment, prompting Sumi and Souta to duck back below the ledge, but it didn’t seem to notice much. Its eyes were unfocused, the corners of its eyelids matted with yellow gunk. It rolled on its side with a pitiable whine, exposing long rows of matching puncture wounds alongside its right flank. 

Sumi didn’t want to look away, even when Souta tapped her arm. It was fairly likely that she was the first person to observe a juvenile Rathian, and she wanted to commit everything possible to memory. Souta shook her gently, which she ignored. Finally he tugged at her gorget, forcing her to back down the ladder. 

When they were a safe distance away, he leaned back in to whisper to her. 

“You see those wounds?”

“Of course.”

“Looked like Tigrex marks to me. I think we can guess what started this whole feud.”

“It adds up. A desperate, starving Tigrex tried to prey on Rath young, but bit off more than it could chew.”

“Probably. You remember how many eggs were in the Rathian’s nest the last time we were there?”

“Five or six, I think?”

“And now there’s only one. Tigrex probably managed to nab a few before it got chased off.”

Sumi winced at the mental image. An adult Rathian was an obvious predator, a threat, but babies of any species elicited sympathy from her. Even now the occasional whines that filtered over from the Rathian and its baby were gut wrenching. 

“So what do we do now?” 

“You remember which plateau the Rathian nest was by?” 

“Not really.” Sumi answered honestly. She let herself look down for the first time, forcing away the sudden sense of dizziness that threatened to overwhelm her. The Listless wasn’t floating high, but it was still higher than she’d ever been. It also gave her an excellent view of the jungle, one she’d never had. She could see a few plateaus dotting the landscape, but none struck her as immediately familiar. All she could remember of the Rathian nest was that it had been at the base of a cliff, in a small alcove. She couldn’t imagine being able to--

She blinked, reconsidering.“I’m guessing it was that one, Souta.” Sumi whispered while pointing. One plateau, perhaps a mile away, had a gentle curve inward on the end closest to them. Its base was blackened by black ash in a great swathe, hundreds of square feet of jungle in the area having been pulped and incinerated. 

Souta slipped his telescope out of his pocket with one hand, bringing it to his eye. He kept his eye on the freshly-produced wasteland, face growing grimmer by the second. Finally, he passed the telescope to Sumi. 

She brought it to her eye, struggling to keep it still while dangling off the side of a wind-rocked airship. Souta put a hand on her shoulder, steadying her. She managed to bring the cracked lens onto the remnants of what had once been the Rathian’s nest. 

She let out a small gasp at what she saw. A Rathalos corpse, desiccated. Even from this distance she could see that large chunks had been torn out of its wings and body, staining the blackened ground beneath it red. Its claws gripped chunks of orange flesh, as did its beak, but its throat had been savagely bitten halfway through. Clearly the Tigrex hadn’t gotten the chance to enjoy its victory, because the corpse was now crawling with all kinds of opportunistic scavengers. The largest among them, the jagras, were tearing at it with gleeful abandon, sending chunks of viscera flying into the air.  

It seemed she had an explanation for why the Rathalos hadn’t shown up yet. She lowered the spyglass, handing it back to Souta. His ashen expression matched her own. 

“And that’s why the Rathian was shopping around for a new home. Guess it wasn’t satisfied with a nest on the ground anymore.”

Sumi shuddered. “Can’t say I blame her.”

They hung on the airship for a while longer, thinking private thoughts. If the Rathalos was dead then they likely couldn’t count on the Rathian to deal with the Tigrex for them. That problem was fully their responsibility again. Sumi had been operating with the vague idea that the Rathian and Rathalos could be drawn together to drive off the Tigrex, but with the Rathian evidently choosing the Listless as its new nest they’d be hard pressed to convince it to leave. Especially with a wounded chick and dead mate. 

She kept thinking for a moment longer, the breeze rolling across her a welcome relief. Eventually, she gave in.

Sumi leaned over to Souta. “I’m fresh out of good ideas. You got anything?”

“Same. I’ve got nothing.”

“Hey, now. I didn’t say I was out of ideas. Just good ones.”

Souta’s face twisted into a particularly unique arrangement. Sumi thought it was a mixture of doubt, hope, and worry, with a majority resignation. He sighed. “What’s the idea?”

Sumi whispered her plan to him, pointedly ignoring his reactions. Souta rejected it outright, then spent several more minutes trying and failing to think of his own plan. With gritted teeth he reluctantly agreed to hers. 

------------------------------------------------------

Sumi was no sailor, but even she could tell the winds were fairly peaceful that day. The Listless had been on a more or less steady course for the entire time they’d been tracking it, drifting closer to the village. Without any kind of steering it was going to pass her home by from the East, eventually spinning off over the distant ocean. It was hardly ideal, of course, but there was still a point of closest approach where the airship would be a minimum distance from the village. That was their moment to strike.

They’d popped their heads to look over the deck several times by now and were confident the Rathian was sound asleep. It had battle wounds of its own. Its wings were shredded in a dozen places, though the wounds were slowly closing. It was a wonder it had even been able to fly high enough to reach the Listless. An adult healed much quicker than a juvenile, but it would likely spend quite a bit longer asleep.

At least it would have, if they didn’t do what they were about to do.

It was almost time. Souta tightened his grip on the railing next to her, muscles tensing underneath his armor. She readied herself likewise, gauging the drop to the ground. They were fifteen meters or so above the jungle. He’d said that would probably be fine, but she was nervous. Everything could fall apart at step one. 

No time to hesitate anymore. Souta whispered a countdown. At zero, they launched themselves up onto the deck. 

Sumi sprinted to the left, keeping her shield between the Rathian and herself, for whatever good it might do. Souta headed directly for the wyvern, head bowed as if prepared for a tackle. The Rathian mother, deep in sleep, reacted lethargically. It opened a single great eye just as Souta slammed into its chick, scooping it up in both arms. 

The Rathian surged to its feet, opening its mouth in a bellowing rage, but it was too late. Souta’s sprint, burdened though it was by the two hundred pound squirming mass of teeth and scales, had already carried him to the far edge of the deck. His dismount wasn’t graceful in the slightest. He tried to jump the barrier, but was too heavy, leading to his thighs slamming against the railing to send him front flipping into the open air, screaming all the while. His voice cut off suddenly as he landed below, hopefully not because his neck had been snapped. The Rathian turned to chase after him. 

Now came Sumi’s part. She let out as loud of a scream as she could, voice cracking as she banged her sword against her shield. The Rathian’s eyes flicked to her, but it wasn’t enough. She needed to give Souta as much of a head start as she could. Sumi charged the Rathian, shield raised high. 

The Rathian didn’t bother to face her, opting to flick its gargantuan tail in her general direction. Sumi threw herself to the deck, armor scraping as she slid forward. It turned out to be unnecessary; the Rathian was tall enough that its swinging tail spikes ripped through the envelope to entangle themselves above. 

Sumi hurried to her feet, resuming her charge. Utterly enraged, the Rathian took the base of its tail in its mouth and forcefully ripped it out of the envelope, spinning about itself. It was desperate to chase after her stolen chick. She reached it just as it came to a stop.

Sumi leapt forward, putting both her hands behind the pommel of her sword as she drove the point towards the Rathian’s chest. 

Her blade made contact, throwing up a shower of sparks as the tip slid to the side without piercing a thing, nearly slipping out of her hands entirely. Her momentum slammed her into its chest, then she hit the deck, hard. 

She opened her eyes to find herself between the Rathian’s legs. Its beak was reaching down for her, opened wide. She gasped, trying to throw herself to the side, but it was too late. 

The Rathian grabbed her sideways by the torso, pulling her through the air. She closed her eyes and braced herself for a crush, teeth and claws tearing through her armor. 

Instead she nearly vomited as she felt herself accelerate up and away, cartwheeling through the air. She opened her eyes to a world that was a spinning blur, the shape of the Listless receding into the distance. 

This was finally enough to get her to shriek, high pitched and undignified. She curled into a ball, trying to protect her head. She had the briefest flash of a memory, a desperate and feverish recollection of Souta saying that Hunters could survive more of a fall than she’d expect, and then she hit the canopy. 

Branches slammed into her, cracking with snaps louder than explosions. She tumbled through the trees, every part of her body taking some blow or another until she finally impacted a solid surface, rolling to a stop. 

She couldn’t draw a breath. Her lungs wouldn’t cooperate. She spasmed on the jungle floor for a moment, pounding her chest. Finally she managed to draw in a single gasp, loud and agonized. She burst into a fit of half coughing, half gagging, her stomach trying to force her to vomit. She rolled onto her stomach, trying to push herself to her feet even while coughing. 

The Listless , now leaking even more than it had been before, was falling. The Rathian spread her tattered wings, eyes scanning for her missing chick. Sumi forced herself up and began running towards the shadow of the ship. 

The Rathian’s head snapped to a direction, and then it bellowed loud enough to shake the trees. Sumi could only assume it had spotted him. It leapt from the ship, the force of it finally throwing the Listless to crash into the ground. 

Sumi was limping from dozens of bruises that were spreading across her skin. Her unarmored leg had naturally been hit the hardest, and it ached terribly. Once again she desperately missed her Hunter’s belt, where her potion was stored. All she had with her now were bandages, which weren't much help when she was busy running through the wild.

She burst into an unexpected clearing. The Rathian was tearing a swathe through the jungle in its pursuit of Souta, leaving her with a relatively clear path to follow. She breathed a sigh of relief that Souta had managed to survive his own fall from the ship. 

Sumi could see the Rathian at the end of the impromptu corridor, where it was furiously ripping its way through the foliage. Trunks popped and crunched under its talons while the largest trees were gripped by its beak and thrown skyward. She grit her teeth and began to follow it. 

The Rathian spotted her almost immediately, red eyes boring into her. She waved her sword and shield at it in challenge, hoping to draw it back and away from Souta. 

Instead of charging it stretched its mouth wide, as if to roar, and then it stretched even wider. Where she expected a screech she heard only a high-pressure hiss, confusing her. An answer to her question came with a flash of light and a roaring ball of fire. 

Sumi had only enough time to dive to the side before the fireball crashed into the ground she’d just been standing on. It rolled outward in a wave, like some demented fluid. She had to scramble on hands and knees to prevent it from reaching her. Only once the heat at her back faded did she stand. 

She was some ten feet away from the crackling remnants of the fire and could still feel the blistering heat rolling off of it. She tried to look at it, but had to shield her eyes from the heat. 

The Rathian, meanwhile, had resumed its burrowing through the jungle. She shook off the existential dread that accompanied any near-death experience and took off at her fastest limp to follow it, determined to ensure Souta reached the village. She didn’t know how close it was to him, only that it hadn’t caught him yet.

She continued to follow the Rathian’s path through the forest, unsure of what else she could do. She couldn’t get close enough to distract it without getting eviscerated, and there was a limit to how many fireballs she could dodge before ending up roasted. She ended up trailing some hundred feet or so behind the Rathian, doing nothing particularly productive. She felt a sense of simultaneous relief and terror when she heard the distant bellow of the Tigrex. 

Sumi, during her studies to become a Hunter, had once read that there was debate over whether or not Monsters were capable of long term memory formation, like holding grudges. Several Hunters had insisted it was possible, but many scholars disagreed. The Rathian’s reaction gave her an answer. 

She watched the scales along its back raise in a wave, standing at odd angles like a field of stakes. Its tail thrashed, tearing deep gouges in the ground that sent detritus flying. It raised its head to the sky, letting out its own shriek of furious challenge, then it began to tear through the jungle with truly reckless abandon, unconcerned with searching for Souta and her missing chick any longer. 

“Not going to win any mother of the year awards, are you?” Sumi muttered to herself, increasing her limping jog to a limping run to match the new pace of the Rathian. Her leg still pained her, but she was just grateful the Rathian still couldn’t fly. 

In only a few minutes the Rathian tore into the village clearing proper, tossing aside the carefully cultivated wall of trees like so much trash. With a clear view Sumi could finally see Souta some several hundred yards ahead, the juvenile Rathian slung over his shoulder like a bag of rice. 

The Rathian charged after him, and she charged after it. In the distance she saw the shape of the Tigrex emerge from behind the tavern, as wide as the entire road through town. It pawed the ground in challenge, roaring again. She really wished it would stop doing that so close to the tavern. She didn’t think anyone in town knew sign language, and it certainly seemed like they were heading towards a majority deaf population. 

The Rathian and Tigrex charged each other at first sight, with Souta stuck in the middle. She saw him skid to an ungraceful stop, then begin sprinting sideways out of the collision zone. 

As the two massive Monsters charged, their footfalls shaking the ground, Sumi began seriously reconsidering the wisdom of approaching closer. 

She wasn’t sure who would win the conflict, initially. The Tigrex was nominally larger and more powerful, but it had been starving for what had likely been weeks, and was still recovering from Rathalos-inflicted wounds. Though the Rathian couldn’t fly properly, nullifying one of its only advantages. 

Her uncertainty lasted all the way up to the first collision. It seemed that she’d forgotten to take into account one very important factor.

The Rathian was very, very angry. 

The Tigrex caught the Rathian’s right wing in its jaws, shaking its head savagely, but the Rathian ignored the wound entirely. Her head flashed down to latch onto the Tigrex’s neck, sharp beak piercing deeply into the flesh. 

The Tigrex was forced to let go of its hold on the wing, jumping upward to try and throw the Rathian off. 

The Rathian opted to jump with it, wings swooping low. The two massive creatures shot upward into the sky for a brief moment, suspended above the village, and then the Rathian got its claws onto the back of the Tigrex and brought its wings high again, driving them both downward.

The Tigrex slammed into the ground with such force that the shaking earth sent Sumi stumbling in her run. The Tigrex rolled onto its back, extracting itself from the hold to begin clawing wildly with all four limbs. It scored several long lacerations down the chest of the Rathian, which stumbled backward. 

It seemed that this had been the moment the Tigrex was waiting for. Its head jutted forward, heading for the exposed neck of the Rathian. Sumi’s mind flashed back to the lethal wound she’d seen on the Rathalos in the exact same spot. 

The Rathian apparently thought the same thing. It ducked its head down at the last second, head twisting to one side to catch the Tigrex’s jaws in a macabre embrace. The Tigrex, still on its back, thrashed wildly to try and escape, but the Rathian followed each and every movement. 

From fifty yards away Sumi saw the light forming in the Rathian’s throat while the wyvern kept the Tigrex’s jaws forced open in front of its own mouth. 

If it had been a fireball that the Rathian had lobbed at Sumi, this was a maelstrom. A torrent of liquid fire bubbled outward to spew down the throat of the Tigrex, so intense that the entire village grew brighter. The Tigrex’s thrashing turned spasmodic, involuntary muscle contractions wracking its body as it burned from the inside out. 

The Rathian adjusted its grip, throwing the Tigrex’s head to the ground. The fire didn’t stop, nor did the furious roar that accompanied it. Sumi watched the Tigrex’s throat and stomach begin to melt away, letting secondary jets of fire shoot from its corpse like a pierced wineskin. 

The Tigrex’s spasms stopped, but the Rathian continued on and on, gouts of fire summoned up from some unimaginable reserve. She hadn't thought this was something a Rathian could do. Sumi hadn't thought this was something anything could do. It was as horrifying as it was awe-inspiring.

Only when the Rathian stood above a pile of gurgling fat and raw viscera did its jaws finally snap closed, crushing the remnants of the Tigrex’s charred snout between them. 

Finally, it reached its head to the sky, screeching in what sounded to Sumi like a pitiable mixture of rage and agony. Fires had spread around it, working their way across the grass and slithering up the wooden walls of nearby homes. The Rathian stood in the center of a growing firestorm, panting heavily. 

Its eyes flicked to Souta and the baby Rath, who’d been paralyzed by fear and wonder in front of the tavern. Sumi was close enough now to see his eyes widen, freezing in his application of healing paste to the Rath chick's wounds.

He dropped the baby unceremoniously on the ground, sprinting away. 

The Rathian ignored Souta entirely, eyes softening at the sight of its chick. It stepped forward, opening its wounded wing. The baby Rath stumbled forward, seeking the familiar embrace. With a gentle but still-steaming beak, the mother Rathian picked up its young and began to limp towards the forest. 

Chapter Text

Sumi’s neighbors spilled out of the tavern as soon as the Rathian passed into the treeline. They immediately organized into a bucket brigade, ferrying water from the well to the smoldering ruins of about a quarter of the village’s buildings. 

Sumi initially began to join the line, but her father admonished her and pointed her to Souta. He was dragging half-burning logs away from other buildings, using his Hunter’s strength to create fire breaks. Her father took her place in line while she went to help. 

The fire was under control by the time night had fallen. Those that had lost their home were going to sleep in the tavern until Sumi and Souta could escort a tree-cutting team into the jungle to get replacement building materials. Many of the villagers whose houses still stood had donated blankets, pillows, and clothes, letting some semblance of normalcy filter back into the bizarre day. 

Naturally, the crew of the Listless was eager to help. The twenty or so crew that had made it to the village added an additional third to the village’s population, which was an enormous help. 

It turned out that one of the more severely injured of the ship’s passengers had been the Hunter sent to replace Souta. He’d been sleeping belowdecks when the crash had happened and been thrown from his bunk, knocked unconscious. His concussion-dilated eyes were fairly sheepish as she and Souta appraised him of the situation he’d missed. Sumi would have poked more fun at him if it wasn’t obvious that he was a fairly experienced Hunter who’s just been caught off-guard. She imagined it wouldn’t be long before something similar would happen to her, retroactively making her a hypocrite. 

Sumi was busy dragging a half-flaming log (one that was thicker than her, she was proud to say) towards a burn pile when the woman with the leg injury she'd helped earlier came up to her. Her long aviator pants had been replaced with local shorts, her injured leg wrapped in a swathe of bandages. She patiently waited until Sumi had dropped off her log before grabbing her attention. 

Not that she needed to try to grab Sumi’s attention. Her leather jacket was half-slipped off on account of the jungle heat, her undershirt soaked with sweat. Her hair had been raggedly cut and shaved, exposing another wound that Sumi had never even noticed on the side of her head. The woman’s limping gait matched her own, though Sumi’s was steadily improving on account of the potion she’d managed to fetch a few minutes before. 

“Hey, Sumi.” The woman called. 

“Hey, uh, leg lady.” Sumi answered. She swiped her hands across her pants, then offered her a handshake. 

“Hikoshi.” She supplied, returning the handshake. Sumi cringed as she saw Hikoshi’s hand come away covered in soot. 

“How’s your leg treating you?” Sumi asked. 

“Not too bad, all things considered,” Hikoshi answered, shaking her leg demonstratively. “A nasty cut, but nothing broken. Got a bit deep, bleed a bit much, but I should be fine now. Once I’m less lightheaded, at least.”

“Glad to hear that.” Sumi said. She blinked at herself. Was she making small talk right now? When was the last time she did that? “Should you be up and around already, though?” 

Hikoshi shrugged. “Doc gave me clearance. Just not supposed to put much weight on it, or do any lifting,” She tapped the side of her head, where the bandage was located. “Or sleep on this side, I guess.” 

“Doesn’t look like it’d be comfortable, anyway.” 

“Ha, no. Probably not.” 

They stood in silence for a moment, looking awkwardly around. Hikoshi was standing next to the burn pile, and fanned herself with her jacket to avoid the heat. Sumi glanced away, which Hikoshi chuckled at. 

Souta suddenly appeared, dragging a massive log between the two of them. “Alright y’all, either get a room or get helping.”

Sumi blinked rapidly, turning to Souta. If he hadn’t been next to a several foot tall pile of burning wood she would have shoved him. “Wha- What are you talking about?”

“You saved her life, Sumi. She’s got the hots for you. And Hoki or whatever, she hasn’t been able to make eye contact with you for like ten straight sentences. Stop beating around the bush and get on with it already.”

Hikoshi burst into laughter while Sumi blushed furiously. Souta tossed his log into the fire and walked off, muttering to himself. She was pretty sure she heard something about ‘kids these days’, which was pretty rich coming from someone a whopping three years older than her. 

“So, uh, are you from here?” Hikoshi asked. 

“Never even left.” Sumi shrugged, hitching a thumb over her shoulder to point at the de-roofed house on the hill that was her childhood home. “Lived up there my whole life, which’ll be changing as soon as your ship’s repaired, I guess.” 

“The Listless is still flying?” Hikoshi asked, eyes brightening. 

“Uhh, kind of?” Sumi waffled. “I mean, last I saw it it had more holes than a sponge, but the balloon was still flying. Even if, you know, the rest of it wasn’t. Kind of all smashed on the ground, actually.”

Hikoshi’s relieved smile didn’t abate at the mixed news. She waved dismissively. “Oh, that’s fine. We can fix anything, but we can’t get more hydrogen. No Paolumu’s out here, much less the equipment to harvest it off them. As long as the rigging’s intact enough to keep it anchored we could throw together a whole new gondola if we need to.” 

“Oh, good. I think your ship was my ride out of here, actually.”

“Really?” Hikoshi seemed suddenly intrigued. “Is that why we were commissioned out here? It was a pretty long way out of our usual route, but it’d make sense if it was to transfer Hunters. Obviously we should have double checked with the Guild about local wyverns, but this was the first time anyone had flown the route, so I guess we were just a really big scout ship if anything.” Sumi blinked. Hikoshi’s words were pouring out endlessly, without a single pause for breath. “From what I could see it seems like this village is actually in a pretty enviable spot, since the winds were so favorable on the trip here, so I bet you’ll be getting the funds to get a proper wall soon, maybe even end up permanent enough to earn yourselves a name. The Southernly passes pretty close to Narrowstraight, down on the coast, and that’s a pretty big trade city already. You’ll be a good port, ‘cause the currents cross at just a few thousand feet over here, which is pretty rare. That makes this place, what, a three way intersection? This’ll end up as a good trade hub, even if prospectors don’t find too much worthwhile on its own.”

Sumi nodded sagely, her familiarity with the individual words Hikoshi used not helping her understand their overall meaning. 

“I take it you like being an aviator, then?”

Hikoshi laughed, waving a hand. “Oh, sorry about that. Yeah, it’s always been pretty much my dream. Riding the currents, plotting courses. Always wanted to end up assigned as a scout, though. Lugging around cargo on the newest, biggest ship looks great on a resume, but doesn’t do much for the soul, y’know?”

“Getting tied to one place, doing the same thing over and over till you die? I get that. Same reason I ended up being a Hunter, I think. Pretty close, at least.”

Souta’s muffled but not-too-distant voice filtered in. “Just ask her out already!” Sumi sputtered in response, but Hikoshi immediately leaned in to speak quieter. 

“Do you want to get lunch tomorrow?” She had a hopeful tilt of her head, letting her long hairs fan across her shoulder. Sumi’s train of thought skipped a track or two. 

“Uh, sure?”

“Awesome! I’ll let you get back to it. I’ve got a lot of questions about the area, though, so bring your brain tomorrow. See ya!”

“See ya?” Sumi stuttered, bewildered. They exchanged friendly waves as Hikoshi limped back towards the tavern. 

Sumi stood there for a while longer, removing her helmet to rub at her temples. Souta passed her by, hauling another log. 

“What… just happened?” She wondered aloud.

“Think I just got you a date, shortstuff. You’re welcome.” 

“Huh.” She smacked her lips thoughtfully. “ Huh . Never had one of those before.”

Souta grinned as he tossed the log into the fire. “Oh, that’s perfect. Can I sit a few tables away to watch the disaster unfold?”

“I will kill you.”

Souta shrugged. “Almost worth it, honestly. Now come on, get back to helping already. I think you owe me one for that.”

“I would’ve figured it out eventually! You just made it awkward.”

He gave her a doubtful look. “Did you even know you liked girls before ten minutes ago?”

“I mean, no, but…”

“Then I know exactly how it would have gone. You two would have had your weird, awkward conversation for two hours until it was time to go to sleep, then you would have had a half dozen more near-misses while we were on the ship until it was finally time for you two to split off, and then you would have realized that this was your last chance and oooh, big confession moment ,” he waved his hands demonstratively, “and then you’d have had this whole big thing about figuring out who goes with who or whatever, and then it’d be a big dramatic mess. So there you go, I saved you like ten chapters of a romance novel. Enjoy your date tomorrow.”

Sumi stared at him, slack jawed. “I changed my mind. I’m killing you now.”

“Don’t hate the truth, girl.”

“That was way too specific, though. Where’d that story come from?”

Souta shrugged. “Personal experience. You’ll have to ask my wife about it sometime, she’s a better storyteller than me.”

“You have a WIFE?” Sumi demanded. 

“Uh, yeah? Have I never mentioned her?” 

“No!” 

His face blanched. “Well… when you meet her, could you not tell her that?”

“I’ve known you for two years and spent every day of the last two months talking to you and you didn’t tell me you had an entire wife , Souta. I’m sorry, but there’s no way I’m going to pass that opportunity up.”

“I guess I’ll never introduce you two, then.”

“You don’t get an option. You’re gonna have to face this one, bud, I’m sorry.”

He put on an expression of exaggerated worry. “Well, in the meantime, let’s finish this cleanup. I’ve got beds to be in.”

    ----------------------------------------------------

Sumi lay in her bed, ignoring the jostling of Naoki’s restless sleep nearby. Sunlight was creeping past the tarps that were trying to keep the morning rains out of her roofless home. She was surprised. The last time she’d slept past sunrise had been before she’d begun training to be a Hunter. She must have really been exhausted. 

Her stomach rumbled loudly, bringing her attention to the fact that she was absolutely starving. She always was, these days, with how much work she’d been doing, but this was exceptional even by her standards. She’d thought she’d try to fall back asleep, but that clearly wasn’t an option. 

She rolled out of bed and dressed as quickly as possible, heading for the kitchen. She could smell the food cooking above the fireplace, drawing her forward like a moth to a flame. 

Her mother was standing in front of the pot, stirring it steadily. Sumi’s stomach rumbled, announcing her presence. 

Her mother greeted her with a raised eyebrow. “I know that look. You’re not getting anything out of this pot, understand? There won’t be anything left for the rest of us.”

“I’m not that hungry.” Sumi lied.

“You’re lying.” Her mother stated simply. “Go down to Oji’s and get a proper meal there. There’s some money on the stool by the door. If that won’t cover it tell Oji your father will give him a discount in the future, alright?”

“You don’t have to do that, Mom.” Sumi insisted, even as she headed for the door. “I’m a Hunter now. I can pay my own way.”

“Have you gotten paid yet?”

“Uh-” Sumi looked down at the small pile of coins by the door. She sheepishly swept them into her pocket. “No, not yet. I’ll pay you back.”

“I’m sure you will.” Her mother agreed, her characteristic smirk breaking through her stern demeanor. Sumi thanked her, then grabbed her sword and shield and set out for the tavern at a light jog. She really was hungry. 

She was about halfway there when she remembered one fairly significant problem with grabbing breakfast at the tavern. Hikoshi was still staying there. 

She tried to think of where she could eat, slowing her pace to a walk. Souta almost always ate at the tavern, so he wouldn’t have anything for her to mooch off of. She could ask one of her neighbors to let her join breakfast, but she’d probably end up working her way through half their pantry before she was finished. 

She considered for a moment simply disappearing into the forest to hunt her own meal, but that would take far too long. She was forced to give in, heading to the tavern. Maybe Hikoshi would be sleeping, still? On the second floor, ideally. 

She entered an uncharacteristically bustling tavern. Oji was manning one of the hot plates next to his son, who was a year younger than Sumi. Aviators and villagers filled up the bars and tables, injuries visible on nearly everyone. She noticed several had newer bandages over their ears, and were shouting quite a bit louder than should have been necessary. Courtesy of several hours of Tigrex roars, she’d guess. The overall effect was that she felt more like she was in a rowdy city bar than her familiar village tavern. 

She sidled up to the bar, relieved that she hadn’t seen Hikoshi yet. All the stools were taken, so she waited standing between two unfamiliar faces. 

Oji swiped the stove’s contents onto plates, working at a pace she expected he hadn’t needed to in years. His movements were impressively well-coordinated nonetheless, especially when contrasted with the clumsy awkwardness of his son right next to him. 

He flipped around, wooden plates balanced up and down his arms, ready to serve. He started handing them out one by one, working down the line until he got to Sumi. His eyes widened as he stopped in his tracks. She watched him take in a great lungful of air and tried to pre-emptively shush him, but it was pointless. 

“Sumi!” He bellowed, causing her to wince. Curious heads turned her direction all across the room. “How’re you feeling? Had a bit of a limp yesterday, didn’t you? Probably shook it off already, knowing you.” 

THe man on her right immediately piped up. “You one of the Hunters that cooked that Tigrex?”

“I mean, that was more the Rathian than--” She started. 

“Ah, c’mon, you know what he means.” The woman on her left interrupted. “That was your and your buddy’s plan, wasn’t it?”

“It was mine--”

“Is the Listless still flying?” Called a voice from the crowd behind her. 

“Yes, but it’s--” A rousing cheer went up around the bar, aviators slapping one another on the back and pounding on their tables. She sighed, looking to Oji for help. He just laughed at her, a deep booming tone that added to the cacophony. Sumi felt her stomach rumble again, so she muscled her way forward while a sailing song broke out in the crowd behind her. 

Oji leaned close, but she could see the dried flecks of blood on his ears and knew he wouldn’t be able to hear a thing she said. She pointed at a plate, then at her mouth, dropping coins onto the table. 

He laughed again, spinning around to head for the cooking stove. He swiped several pieces of meat that had been simmering on his son’s stove and piled them into bowls of rice, adding in some spice or another. He slid the bowl to her, accompanied by chopsticks and a large wooden spoon. She discarded the chopsticks, opting to shovel the food into her mouth as fast as she could. 

The aviators on either side of her shared a look, then pushed their half-eaten plates towards her. She gave an appreciative nod, trying to shove some coins their way with one hand while stuffing her face with her other, but they just knocked them back to her and joined the song.

The sailor shanty had entered its second chorus, and now the villagers that were in the tavern were beginning to join in. She kept eating while they sang. 

“Is everybody happy? cried the Captain looking up,

Our Hero feebly answered "Yes," and then he stood him up;

He jumped into the icy blast, his tether line unhooked,

He ain't gonna sail no more!”

Sumi nearly choked on her food. What kind of song was that for aviators to sing? 

“He counted long, he counted loud, he waited for the pop,

He felt the wind, he felt the cold, he felt the awful drop,

The rope from his belt spilled out and wrapped around his legs,

He ain't gonna sail no more!”

    Was he supposed to have been attached to the ship? Why was he even jumping off the ship in the first place?

“Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die!

Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die!

Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die!

He ain't gonna sail no more!”

She gave her aviator bar neighbors a baffled look, which only seemed to delight them. They launched into yet another verse, this one detailing the way the various bits of gore that flew out of the story’s subject on impact, which further carried into a far too realistic account of informing the man’s family how he’d died, and that no, there wasn’t a body to recover.

The song eventually ended after several more macabre verses, concluding in a bout of tavern-wide cheering and laughter. Oji, meanwhile, had piled several more plates in front of her, and she’d somehow missed having been slipped at least three different mugs from others. She took a sip of one, found sweet mead burning and sweetening her tongue, and downed the thing in one long draught. She knocked away her now empty bowl and grabbed another plate, wolfing it down. A rough hand clapped her on the back, then several more, which she ignored.

She kept eating, accepting what had to be more than a half-dozen plates from Oji before she was finally full. Only then did she lean back on her stool, content. Oji raised an eyebrow, offering her another plate, but she waved him off. He shrugged and slid it down the line, replacing the food that she’d probably been stealing from the other patrons. 

She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned around, expecting another person asking her a question. She jumped back when she saw it was HIkoshi, whose leg was now wrapped in a long splint. 

“Want to come upstairs? Preferably quickly, before the doc notices I’m down here where I’m not supposed to be?”

Sumi only nodded, forcefully wiping her mouth to reassure herself that she didn’t have grease stains framing her lips. She surreptitiously inspected her sleeve to make sure that she hadn’t just smeared anything around further. 

Hikoshi limped back through the tavern towards the spiral staircase, Sumi following dutifully along. Hikoshi took the stairs two at a time, hopping on her good left leg while keeping her splinted right leg out for balance. Sumi winced, getting ready to catch her. 

Thankfully she didn’t fall down the stairs, and they emerged into the second floor of the tavern where the rest of the wounded were being kept. 

    The crowd below was muffled by the sturdy floor, but the open staircase still let the general mood filter through. Sumi was grateful for that, because the make-shift hospital would have been fairly depressing otherwise. 

    Many people laid out on white-draped tables, donated pillows propping up either their heads or wounded limbs. Doc Wangshu was moving around the room, checking on each person in a constant rotation. He shot Hikoshi a dirty look as he spotted her climbing up the stairs, but didn’t break away from his task. 

    Sumi followed Hikoshi over to one of the only empty tables, where she hopped up to the table and slipped her leg into a harness that held it elevated in the air. 

“Pull up a chair, Sumi, make yourself at home. I’m not really supposed to be going anywhere, so no scenic walks.”

Sumi did pull up a chair, scooting it up against the table so she’d be out of Wangshu’s way if need be. 

“You didn’t have a splint yesterday, right? What changed?”

Hikoshi waved the concern away, as if it wasn’t important. “Apparently my little trip out to see you busted open the stitches, got me bleeding everywhere again. Something about where the wound is, flexes too much when I move. Nothing broken, so I’ll be fine as soon as it scars up.”

“And you still walked downstairs to talk to me?”

She shrugged. “I’m impatient, I’ll admit it. And it’s not like I had much else to do around here, anyway.”

“Except heal up, follow the doc’s orders.”

“I had nothing interesting to do, then.”

Wangshu’s voice floated across the room. “If you sneak out again I can assure you I’ll do something very interesting to you, ma’am. Stay sitting.”

Hikoshi’s expression seemed less intimidated, more mildly impressed. She leaned in to Sumi and whispered. “I like him. He doesn’t screw around.”

“I think he’s taking care of more people right now than he has in the last year. I wouldn’t rile him up, he’s pretty handy with a knife.”

“Noted.” Hikoshi reached behind herself, untucking a sheath of loose papers that Sumi hadn’t noticed earlier. She slipped a stick of charcoal out of her breast pocket and slapped the papers onto the table between them. 

Sumi leaned in, inspecting them. The top paper was filled by a grid, each square about a centimeter wide. Almost every square had three tiny parallel lines in its center, save for a few that had wavy lines at their center, and some with an upside-down U. Those occasional oddities were surrounded by irregular shapes. 

After some consideration, it clicked. 

“This is a map, right? The wavy lines are lakes, the U shapes are plateaus.” She searched for a moment longer to find her village, surprised to see that it only took up a few squares. “And this is us, here.” 

“Yup!” Hikoshi confirmed, beaming a smile. “Would you say it’s accurate? The reference is two hundred meters per square.”

“You’re asking me?” Sumi clarified. 

“You’re local, so you know the area better than me. I just sketched this on the way out here, and I’ve got no way to double-check it.”

“Sure, I’m local, and I’ve even gone out into the jungle, but…” She pointed at the top of the paper. “Is this north?” Hikoshi nodded. “Then if that’s north, and the village ends here… Okay, yeah, that’s it.” She tapped one of the plateaus, the one closest to the village. “This is the farthest I’ve ever gone. And I’ve never seen it from above, at least until yesterday.” 

Hikoshi hummed, looking down at her map. “Darn. I was hoping locals would be able to confirm my work when we came into ports. Guess it makes sense that you haven’t been able to travel far, especially in the jungle.”

“Pretty much everyone born here has never left the village, really. I imagine it’ll be the same in any small town. Sorry.”

“Oh, no, don’t apologize. That one’s on me. I’ve spent my whole life with my head in the literal clouds. I’m out of touch with how most people live, honestly.”

“Your whole life?” Sumi asked. 

Hikoshi nodded, shuffling her papers back together. The stack of self-drawn maps was impressively high. “Parents were career aviators, had me right there on a ship. They kept sailing while they raised me, all the way until their backs gave out. I didn’t want to retire with them, so here I am. I don’t know if I’ve spent more of my life in the air than on the ground, but it’s got to be close, I’d imagine.”

“Well, now I feel outclassed.” Sumi rubbed the back of her head. “I started Hunting just a couple months back. My dad and I worked the forge, my mom does calligraphy.”

“Well your skillset definitely seemed to be more helpful than mine the past few days.” Hikoshi joked. “I can barely walk a straight line once I’m off a ship, much less hold down a job. If they end up scrapping the Listless when we get back to port then I’m sunk.” 

“Really? I’d have thought aviators were in high demand. Your ship was the first one I’ve ever seen, but from the way the caravans talk some places have a sky practically filled with airships.”

Hikoshi snorted. “‘Course the caravaneers would say that. They’re just jealous ‘cause we can get a load delivered in a quarter of the time, and we don’t have to pay the guild half our profits for an escort.” She sighed, leaning back to rest her head against the wall. Her leg, propped up in the sling like it was, didn’t look comfortable. “Sure, there’s a lot of ships out there. But most of them aren’t hiring. Once a ship has been sailing long enough the crew acts more like family than coworkers. New hires only manage to get on when someone retires or dies, or when a new ship is built. None of those happen that often.”

Sumi glanced around the room, which was filled with wounded aviators. She knew that some bodies had already been stacked outside, as respectfully out of view as possible. “Even taking that into account it… uh, doesn’t seem like openings would be all that rare.”

Hikoshi chuckled darkly. “But they are. Know why?” Sumi shook her head. “Because most of the time when something goes wrong enough on an airship to get someone killed, it gets everyone killed. Funny thing about being a few thousand feet above the earth is that it turns just about every problem into an all-or-nothing deal. You either fix it, and everyone’s fine, or you end up with a helluva way to die.” 

Sumi grimaced. “I’d say that’s morbid, but it’s something I’ll probably have to get used to.”

“Hunters aren’t much better, from what I’ve heard.”

It was Sumi’s turn to chuckle. She began to quote a saying that Souta had begun pounding into her head. “There’s old Hunters, and there’s bold Hunters, but--”

“--There’s no old, bold aviators.” Hikoshi finished. They both shared a laugh. 

“Looks like we’ve already got plenty in common.” 

“Yeah. A bad choice in career path.” 

They sat quietly for a minute, listening to the bustling tavern below. Hikoshi eventually broke the silence. 

“So… is this a date?”

Sumi choked on her own spit. She really hadn’t expected that. “I mean, I guess? I’ve never been on one before, but they usually don’t happen in field hospitals, from what I’ve heard.”

“Most people don’t get their first crush while they’re delirious with blood loss, being lifted into the air to save their life, either.”

Sumi didn’t know how to respond to being referred to as someone’s first crush, so she nervously decided to breeze past it. She could feel her cheeks brightening despite her best efforts. “Yeah, I guess so. Kind of got started on the wrong foot, didn’t we?”

“And yet it’s going so well!” Hikoshi countered cheerfully. She glanced down at Sumi’s clothes, then reached out to thump the notebook that was tucked into one of her shirt pockets. “What’ve you got there? I showed you mine, so you show me yours.”

“This is just my Hunter’s notebook.” She slipped it out of her pocket, flipping through the pages. “Pretty bog standard stuff. I haven’t had much of a chance to add my own observations, so it’s mostly just copied off of Souta’s. His is a heck of a lot more impressive.”

“Show me, though.” She reached out to take it, but Sumi pulled it back.

“A lot of it’s sketches, and I really haven’t had much practice. Just a few hours here and there, trying to draw stuff by memory. It’s really not--”

“Gimme.” Hikoshi interrupted, snatching it from her hands. Sumi winced, but let her flip through its pages. 

Hikoshi’s eyes widened. “Wait, is this all in ink?”

Sumi scratched the back of her head. “Yeah, all of it. My mom’s teaching me how to draw, and she won’t let me use charcoal. Says I need to ‘ learn the right way’ and all that junk.” Sumi explained, voice dropping into a not-half-bad impression of her mother’s tone. 

“That’s wild, Sumi. I could never make my maps in ink. I screw up way too often for that. What do you do if you make a mistake?” 

“Leave it, mostly, unless I ruined the whole page, then I’d tear it out. Not like you can wipe off ink.”

Hikoshi continued flipping through the pages, whistling appreciatively. “Then you don’t make many mistakes, do you? Neat lines, steady hand, only a few blots here and there. Impressive.”

“Thank you.” Sumi said with a smile, surprising herself with a genuine reaction to the praise. She felt a sudden compulsion to mitigate it. “‘Course, it’s not hard when all your drawings look like that.”

Hikoshi glanced up at Sumi, quirking an eyebrow.  “Yeah, they’re not great yet. But I can tell you’re writing from the front backwards, because they’re getting better on every page.”

Sumi started to deflect the praise, but stopped herself just in time. She didn’t want to be annoying. Hikoshi reached the end of her notes in short order and handed the book back to her. 

“Nothing in there about the big fellow that followed us through the jungle, I noticed. Haven’t got a chance to give him an entry yet, have you?”

“The Tigrex? No, not yet. I pretty much passed straight out last night, and the first thing I did after waking up was head here to eat.”

“Ooh, does that mean you still need to add it? Can I watch?” 

“You want to watch me take notes on it?”

“Yeah, as long as I can ask questions. It did just spend like the entire day trying to kill and eat me, so consider my curiosity piqued.”

“Alright. Let me go back to my house, grab my supplies. I’ll be back in a minute.” 

Sumi jogged back home and grabbed her inkwell and brushes, also making sure to slip on her Hunter’s belt. She wasn’t quite like Souta, who spent more time in his armor than out of it, but she didn’t want to be caught totally unprepared again. 

She returned to Hikoshi’s table and spread out her supplies, scooting her chair forward to give herself a good writing surface. She began by tracing the general outlines of the living Tigrex on the center of the left page, biting her lip with concentration to keep the thin brush steady. On the right page she was supposed to depict what the Tigrex looked like after the hunt, but that would have less use in this particular case than in most. She could probably draw a heaping pile of mostly-burned lizards and get the same result, though she’d be sure to actually head outside later to draw it by sight. 

After she got the basic shape of the Tigrex layed out, letting her know how much room she had on the rest of the page, she began to describe its features. Hikoshi asked a few questions here and there, wondering what some of the words meant. Sumi found herself surprised at how much of the terminology Hikoshi was un

familiar with; in two short months she’d forgotten just how little most people knew about monsters. 

She had to leave a number of spaces blank without research material, such as the Tigrex’s scientific name and its relation to other species. She mainly focused on its morphological traits, its physical description. She mentally referenced a color chart that Hunters were supposed to use as a standard descriptor of varying hues, describing the Tigrex in shades of commonly available dyes that any reader would hopefully be familiar with. She added patterning to the Tigrex’s drawing, marking them with citations for which color applied to which part. 

Eventually she moved onto the description of its behavior, which was significantly trickier. She chewed on the end of her brush for several minutes, idly chatting with Hikoshi while she thought of how best to summarize her experience with the Tigrex in the little space she was afforded. She eventually decided on the following:

The Tigrex has a reputation as a species that prefers intimidation to confrontation, but it is no less capable than any monster of its size. It is intelligent, likely possessing keen eyesight and a strong sense of smell. When in conflict with peer-level threats it is strategic, capable of intentionally feigning weakness to lure its opponent into an advantageous position. It recovers from wounds at a similar rate to other large monsters, showing only light scarring several days after severe trauma. While its hide is extremely tough, it possesses no inherent resistance to flames, as its internal organs were (seen right) demonstratively susceptible to flames.

    “Dang, Sumi.” Hikoshi whispered over her shoulder, startling her out of her focus. “You don’t write anything at all like you talk.” 

Sumi capped her inkwell and wiped off her brush, done with her notes for now. “Didn’t start that way. I’ve spent the last two months with my head buried in Souta’s notes, and everything he writes is like this.”

Hikoshi made a face. “Y’know, I’ve only heard the guy talk like four times, but I still find it hard to believe that that’s how he writes.”

Sumi shrugged. “Says it’s because he had to spend so much time reading awful, incomprehensible gobbedly-gook that ended up making him hate the author. Didn’t want the next generation of Hunters just as mad at him.”

“Understandable.” 

Sumi leaned back in her chair, stretching her arms out. “What about you? Where’d you learn to make maps?”

“Got lost once, and it sucked,” she said, resting with her hands behind her head. “Big ol’ storm caught us by surprise at night, tossed us every which way. Updrafts wouldn’t let us land, and we were over open ocean anyway, so our anchors couldn’t have snagged anything. We got blown along for the better part of a day, ended up over some desert that none of us recognized.” Sumi’s ears perked up at the mention of the ocean and desert. She’d only talked to a few people that had ever seen either, aside from Souta. 

“No familiar landmarks, no idea what direction the storm had carried us. We had two currents available to us, one heading east, one west, and no one knew which would get us to civilization, much less to our destination. We had plenty of supplies, so it wasn’t like a life-or-death situation, but it would certainly make or break our contract. Ended up having to drift along until nighttime before we could figure out where we were.”

Sumi raised her hand as if she were a student. “Uh, question. Wouldn’t night just make it harder to see?”

“Sure, harder to see the ground. But it’s the only time you can see the stars. You normally don’t need to navigate by them, since currents and trade routes are predictable, but we were in the middle of nowhere. My dad was the only one that knew how to navigate by the stars, but he was too old to climb on top of the envelope to get a good view. The captain had me scramble up, since I was the lightest, and I had to shout down what I saw to my dad. He asked me a bunch of questions that didn’t make much sense to me, but I did my best to answer them. When he yelled for me to come back down I realized that he’d been writing down just about everything I’d said.”

“He’d had me find one constellation of a certain shape, then ask me how many thumbwidths away another constellation was, and I’d measure it out, laying on my back and overlaying my thumbs as carefully as I could. He’d written down pages of stuff like ‘Ameris Constellation, three thumbs south-southeast to upper arm of ‘Meligos’. Just totally incomprehensible stuff, as far as I was concerned.”

“But then he had me put my thumbs on the paper to measure everything out, and used my hands as a reference to make a map of the stars. He brought out a special tool, which I eventually learned was a sextant, and did all this crazy math. Then he had the captain bring out a map, looked at it for two seconds, and said ‘we’re right here’. Just like that, boom. Not lost anymore, just off-schedule. I’d thought it was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen.”

Sumi realized that she’d been leaning closer throughout the story, resting her elbows on the table and watching Hikoshi’s expressions as she’d focused on recalling the story. She coughed awkwardly and sat back, nodding. “Sounds incredible. I can see why you’re interested in it.” 

“Appreciate it. Most people think it’s pointless, you know, because how often is an airship on a trade route going to end up somewhere it didn’t expect? You barely need a map if you have at least one person on your crew that’s run the route before, after all. That’s why I want to be a scout, get my own little ship. Most exploration is still done on the ground, but it’s slow and dangerous. I could go as far as I wanted and know exactly how to make it back, mapping everything the whole while.” Hikoshi stopped herself, then shrunk down slightly, looking embarrassed. “It’s not like I’m the first person to think of the idea. Other people have done it too, but it’s pretty rare. Airships are expensive, and not many organizations outside the Hunter’s Guild are willing to contract one out just to go and take a look around.” 

“You planning to try and get a commission from them, I’m guessing?” 

Hikoshi waved a hand. “Me and half the aviators on the planet. No one pays better than the Guild, and no other routes come with a guaranteed Hunter to protect your ship. It’s a pipe dream to think I’d get noticed in the crowd, especially when I don’t even have my own ship. That kind of thing’s a long, long way off.”

“I don’t know,” Sumi mused. “Souta and I are heading to a Guild hub, and we’ll be getting our next assignment there. If you’re willing to hop off the Listless for a bit you could come with us. I haven’t really dealt with the guild in person yet, but I’d think having two Hunters vouch for you would at least get you through the front door, right?” 

Hikoshi’s eyes widened, mental calculations clearly bouncing through her head. “That would be amazing. I’ve never really been in charge of anything before, so I know they won’t give me a ship on the spot, but just getting my name on the list for work on a Guild airship would be amazing. Would Souta mind, you think?”

Sumi thought of the previous night’s overly-aggressive wingmanning. “I’m almost certain he’d be all for it, but we can ask him later.” 

The noonday bell rang above them, pulled by a cord that ran down into the kitchen below. Sumi reluctantly stood, shocked that she’d spent four or five hours just chatting with someone. 

“Sorry to say it, but I’ve got to go. Have to beat my armor into shape, and record what I can about the Tigrex. Souta’ll be waiting for me, too. Talk to you later?”

“Sooner you can get back here, the better. This room doesn’t have the same view the Listless did, let me tell you.” 

Sumi laughed and gave her a two-finger wave, heading for the staircase. She’d grab lunch and then head out. Maybe she could ask Souta about introducing Hikoshi to the Guild while they worked today, and drop by around dinner to let her know what he said. 

Chapter Text

Sumi spent the rest of the day sprinting between different tasks. The first was the inking of the Tigrex’s corpse, which was decaying much less rapidly than it would have in the jungle proper. The usual scavengers that would have torn its corpse to pieces weren’t willing to venture into the village, so birds had spent the last day burrowing their way through any piece of meat exposed by torn hide. The product reminded her of a half-excavated anthill, the fifty-foot beast becoming a writhing hive of birds with bulging gullets. 

She shoved her nausea aside as she clinically described the scene in thin brush strokes before regretfully moving to her next task. She had to see what, if anything, of the Tigrex was salvageable. 

Its head had been turned a brittle gray by the Rathian’s flames, so fragile that it was flaking away in the wind. Nothing of the torso was spared the damaging heat, even if the flames had only entirely incinerated some specific portions of it. The only section of the Monster that was remotely untouched was its tail, and even that had been roasted in places as the Tigrex’s death convulsions had forced its body to curve in on itself. 

The only useful piece she could find was one of the triangular armor pieces that worked their way down the back of the beast, shrinking in size as they neared the tip of the tail. Sumi supposed their original purpose was to protect the spine from bites from above, which she supposed they had done well enough. It was a shame they couldn’t help the organs inside. 

She compared her shield to the few remaining armor pieces, selecting the smallest for her use. She set to carving them loose, first trying with her knife, then her sword, but found no success. The hide was simply too tough to be cut with her current tools. 

Some of the aviators in the tavern apparently saw her struggling. She looked up to find a small crowd rolling out to greet her, carrying an assortment of what looked like the nearest set of tools they could grab. She protested their help, but they ignored her. Several began wrapping rope around the Tigrex tail, others staking pins to hold it in place. 

The entire crew worked with an uncanny familiarity. Carving up a Tigrex was far from a regular duty on an airship, but they took to it with a baffling level of coordination. With a few suggestions from Sumi they began to pull at the Tigrex’s tail, undertaking the laborious process of separating a single armor piece from the creature. Despite a half-dozen burly sailors pulling at the thing, it was only when Sumi took to hammering her sword into the tension-bound skin that it finally began to give way. 

Two of the aviators took her armored gloves to hold her sword steady while she stood between them, shield gripped in both hands. While the larger group pulled at the rope, she repeatedly slammed her shield over head into the pommel of her sword. It took more than an hour of exhausting work, but with the help of more than a dozen people she managed to extricate a single piece of the Tigrex’s armor. 

She took it to her father at the forge. They discussed various ways to attach it to her shield, as none of the methods they’d used before wouldn’t work. This was the first project that her father was fully out of his depth on, having never worked on any Hunter’s weapons aside from Souta’s bow. 

It was eventually Sumi that came up with the solution. They pulled the crystalline spikes from her shield, letting the Great Jagras skin fall away, and re-melted them. They used a common glue to pin the Tigrex’s armor piece in place while they waited. 

She filled a small pouring cup with the crystalline iron, holding it in long tongs. Her father’s hands were steadier than hers, technically, but she was already finding herself reluctant to let anyone else work on the tools that she’d be relying on to keep her alive. 

She poured the crystalline iron across the edge of the shield, where the wood met Tigrex plating. Her father kept the material from spilling with carefully held iron blocks, keeping them in place until the crystalline iron had cooled.

It wasn’t as strong as a shield made of one common material, but it was still a vast improvement over traditional glue. It was a purely mechanical bond holding the Tigrex armor piece to the shield, the crystalline iron trapping the wood and armor in place. She repeated the process on the opposite side of the shield, where the other part of the Tigrex’s triangular armor met the wood.

That done, she went to Souta’s home. He was laying in the hammock that he preferred to a bed, having shucked his armor so it wouldn’t collapse under the weight. He had perhaps three separate journals open around himself, swapping between them at seemingly random times. 

As soon as she arrived he entered what she (less than affectionately) referred to as Teaching Mode. It was recognizable as words spoken in a hurried dull monotone, the tone of voice he adopted any time he taught Sumi something that he knew neither of them were particularly interested in. She still listened carefully, because neither one of them wanted him to have to repeat anything. 

One journal, he explained, was his personal one, and it was the one he spent the most time on to ensure its quality. The next was his Guild-required logbook, where he clinically noted the details of the Hunt so that any Hunter replacing him would be aware of potential problems in the territory he covered. The third was a backup copy of his journal, and was supposed to be an exact copy, but he admitted that he rarely put as much time in it as he probably should. That was going to be left behind when they moved on, to ensure that if he died out in the field his accumulated knowledge wouldn’t die with him. It was a relatively new rule, meant to prevent the frequent backsliding that occurred any time a particularly knowledgeable Hunter met their unexpected end. Peaceful retirements were a rare thing for Hunters. 

Sumi pilfered some of his empty spare journals, of which there were many, to begin imitating the process. Her mother would certainly have said she needed the practice, at the very least. 

She was writing by candlelight when she had managed to record all the details she thought she should. Souta had already gone to the tavern for dinner, leaving her to her own devices. She thought of joining him, but when she stepped out on the porch she could see the light pouring out of her house’s windows in the distance. She headed for home. 

Dinner was awkward, naturally. None of them had much experience talking about sad topics, and they all agreed that Sumi leaving was depressing. Naoki could only be reassured by the promise of frequent letters, and the bribe of an entire bedroom to have as his own. Her mother stayed silent for the most part, stirring her stew hard enough that the scrape of spoon against bowl was audible. Her father’s eyes shifted from misty to outright crying, though he always tried to turn his head to hide it when a tear managed to escape to roll down his face. They were both happy for her, of course, but they didn’t want it to happen. Sumi knew that the next day would be her last in the village for a long, long time, and the thought filled her gut with a concoction of excitement, dread, and loss that she’d never known before. For the first time in months she could barely finish her meal. She fell asleep that night hugging a teary pillow. 

Sumi woke up the next morning before the sun rose, shuffling through her room to get ready for the day. She shoved her clothes in a pack, pressing them down with her few meager possessions. On top of that she piled all of her various acquisitions of Hunter training: notebooks, claws, bones, and a particularly beautiful gem she’d found wedged in a cave crevice. She pressed a gentle kiss to Naoki’s forehead before slipping through the door to her room.

Her mother and father were waiting at the table, eyes drooping, hands laced over one another across the table. They were still dressed in their clothes from the night before. They’d never managed to fall asleep. Never even tried, it looked like. 

Her father turned around when her mother squeezed his hand, alerting her to Sumi’s failed stealth exit. She crossed the room wordlessly, unwilling to wake her brother. They exchanged tight, long hugs, then one three-way hug that lasted even longer while they whispered encouragement in her ear. She whispered back, answering each concern with a promise to be safe, and that she’d be back. Eventually they made their way out to the porch, reluctantly separating. 

Sumi hugged them both one last time in the sunless morning while the crickets chirped. Just as she was about to turn and leave the front door creaked open, a bleary-eyed Naoki shuffling out. He was on the verge of tears.

Sumi knelt down in front of him, pulling him in for a crushing hug. She was glad she hadn’t put her armor on yet, because she was pretty sure she would have broken his ribs against the metal. As it was, he only squirmed and complained, trying fruitlessly to escape. 

She let him go, brushing his shoulders off. He was only five years old, but in that moment his eyes shone with a surprising amount of depth.

“Gonna miss you, Summy.”

Sumi’s heart ached. He hadn’t called her that in years. She brought him in for another hug, ignoring his protesting squeaks. 

“Gonna miss you too, big guy. Listen to mom and dad, alright?”

He mumbled into her shoulder, obviously holding back tears. “I’ll try.”

Sumi pulled him back, raising her eyebrows pointedly. “Promise?”

His expression firmed. That was a sacred word to him. He nodded. “I promise.”

Sumi set him back down and walked off the porch, taking one last look at her childhood home. It was still in tatters, roof half-repaired, but it was as familiar as it had always been. She wondered what it would look like when she next saw it. She wondered what the people in it would look like then. 

She gave one last wave and turned away, unwilling to look back any longer. She didn’t think she’d be able to stop herself from giving one last goodbye if she did.

---------------------------------------------

Sumi tailed along at the end of a small convoy winding its way through the jungle. She could hardly believe how much the group stumbled to starts and stops, most keeping their eyes locked firmly on their feet just to keep their footing in the treacherous terrain. Sumi knew she’d been far from graceful on her first time out, but surely she hadn’t been this bad, right?

Souta was at the front of the group, leading them towards the Listless ’ hopefully-not-final resting place. Every one of the aviators carried large packs of tools and supplies, having stripped off most of their cool-weather gear just to survive the few mile hike through the jungle. There wasn’t a single person Sumi could see that hadn’t already sweat through their clothes. 

Perhaps the only non-Hunter that wasn’t utterly miserable on this trail was Hikoshi. She was hopping along on a single crutch, spending more time walking backward than she did forward. Sumi had long since lost count of the number of times that she’d had to reach out to catch Hikoshi in the middle of one of her sentences, hauling her back up by the front of her jacket. 

“At this rate I’d be surprised if we make it back to the ship without me tearing your jacket off entirely.” Sumi joked, careful to keep her attention wandering through the forest, keeping an eye out for any opportunistic predators. 

“Is that a promise?” Hikoshi fired back, wiggling her eyebrows. Sumi stumbled.

“I don’t know how to respond to that, so I’m just not going to.”

“Ah, that’s no fun. I bet you could give as good as you get, Sumi.”

“I probably could, at least when I’m not responsible for the lives of twenty-odd people.”

Hikoshi spun back around, facing forward. “Am I bugging you?”

“No.” Sumi answered honestly. Hikoshi was a lot of things, but irritating had yet to be one of them.

“But you need to focus, don’t you?”

Sumi reluctantly sighed. “Yeah, I do. Never done escort duty like this, and a group this big is a tasty target.”

“Understood, madam Hunter,” Hikoshi answered, snapping a surprisingly crisp salute. “Setting mouth to shut and eyes ahead.”

The thought that calling her ‘madam Hunter’ was the most distracting thing Hikoshi had done yet flitted through her mind before Sumi firmly squashed it. She really did need to focus. 

They reached the Listless without any major incidents aside from a plethora of complaining aviators, most of which had by now loudly proclaimed some vow or another to never willingly step foot off a ship again. 

The Listless was at the edge of the temporary clearing the Rathian had made while pursuing Souta. It had been about three days since then, and the plants that were reclaiming the area were already as tall as Sumi. The aviators set about clearing a work area with scythe and machete, while Souta and Sumi circled the area to establish a perimeter. They’d left as soon as the sun rose, to give them the longest possible amount of working time to repair the Listless.

Surveying the damage for herself, Sumi found herself doubting the original plan of having it repaired and flying before the end of the day. The envelope was held on by far fewer ropes than it should have been, and vines had already overgrown what was left of the smashed deck to pin the ship to the ground. 

The side of the ship where the Rathian had both landed and jumped off on was caved in, exposing the lower cargo deck below to the open air. The aviator’s initial approach caused dozens of snakes, lizards, and bugs to skitter out of the wreck. After that the Captain insisted that Sumi be the first one in the ship, in case there was something larger lurking within. Sumi wanted to point out that she wasn’t any more resistant to a snake’s bite than the rest of the crew, but she did have her armor on, unfortunately. She went in with just a lantern in her shield hand, her sword drawn in her left. 

Boxes of cargo had tumbled from carefully organized racks to litter the floor. Anything that had contained food had been thoroughly broken open, devoured by the scavengers that her sweeping presence was forcing out. Thankfully the cargo hold wasn’t massive, and she quickly found the crew hammocks that marked its end. She followed her path back to the hole in the hull to emerge into the blinding light. 

“Should be good now. Nothing too scary, as long as you don’t mind the dark.”

The Captain waved his crew forward to begin their damage assessment. Some clambered up into the deck, others crawled into the hold. She spotted Hikoshi hanging back, gnawing on her lip as she gazed up at the eviscerated envelope. Sumi couldn’t tell if she was just thinking hard or frustrated at her leg stopping her from being one of the ones scrambling up the ropes.

Sumi returned to Souta’s side, discussing their methods for protecting the stranded crew. They called Captain Hikosen over, who confirmed their worries that the repair efforts would certainly last longer than they had daylight for. 

Souta and Sumi had been confident that their constant patrolling would have kept the crew safe during the day, but night in the middle of the jungle was an entirely different thing. With the recent absence of the Rathian, Rathalos, and Tigrex, the jungle would be in an uproar. Herbivores and predators alike would be emboldened to stalk farther and more often, reassured that no Monsters would be swooping down from the sky or lurking in a nearby treeline. In the remote territory that was Sumi’s home few of them would have seen enough Hunters to learn to fear humans on sight. When night fell they might as well have been protecting a herd of hapless sheep. 

They eventually decided on a plan. Souta would take a position up on the deck of the ship, bow in hand to loose arrows at any creature that prowled too close. The crew was instructed to retrieve any arrows that fell close to them and run them back to him, to keep him well supplied. He’d try to go for warning shots first, to conserve his ammunition. Anything that stuck in an animal without killing it would be lost as it ran back into the forest. 

Sumi, meanwhile, would be foraging in the surrounding areas for materials. Her first priority would be choice lumber, long and straight samples that could be easily sharpened into stakes. Several of the crew with woodworking experience had already been pulled from repair duty to fashion what she found into basic defenses and, if time permitted, a palisade. The wall would be overkill for most animals, but if any Monsters like a Great Jagras had started to fill the power vacuum left by the recent conflict then it would barely be enough to keep them alive. 

With their characteristic coordination the crew of the Listless set to work repairing their home. They’d brought axes, saws, and a wide variety of hand tools to speed their work. Soon the clearing began to grow as trees fell and the sound of buzzing saws filled the air. It sounded refreshingly productive, almost like the village back home, but all the commotion set her and Souta on edge. There was no way their presence was going to go unnoticed. 

Sumi returned from a foraging trip a few hours later with a large bundle under both arms to spot Hikoshi dangling in the wind, her casted leg hanging free as she pulled herself up the ropes to the envelope, some tool or another clutched between her teeth. Sumi’s eyes nearly bulged out of her head as she roughly threw her goods at the waiting carpenters, bowling them over. 

“Hikoshi!” She yelled, approaching the hull of the ship. Her furious shouting of Hikoshi’s name didn’t even warrant a glance from most of the aviators, which made her guess it was a common occurrence in their day-to-day life. 

“Y-yes?” Floated a voice down from above, clearly chagrined. Sumi shaded her eyes and craned her neck upward, spotting Hikoshi hanging from an impromptu swing knotted in the rigging. 

“If you don’t get down from there the only reason I’ll be ripping off your jacket is to strangle you with it!” 

Even if people yelling angrily at Hikoshi was common enough to be ignored by the crew, Sumi’s particular threat was apparently unique enough to garner quite a reaction. Hikoshi was about to stammer some excuse back until wolf-whistles and laughter erupted through the clearing. At their encouragement Hikoshi’s apologetic tone died out, replaced with a smirk. 

“You promise~? ” She called down instead, kicking her bare leg out teasingly. The laughter built, even infecting Souta for a slight chuckle as he continued to scan the treeline. Sumi shot him a withering glare that he missed entirely, too focused on his patrol. 

Despite her tease, thankfully, Hikoshi began making her way down the ropes. Sumi was forced to admit as she watched the graceful descent that perhaps her anger wasn’t as justified as she thought. Even using only two hands Hikoshi moved like a monkey, so familiar with her work that she adjusted unconsciously to the shifting of the ropes in the breeze, not a single thing slowing her down. 

Sumi met her at the bottom of the rope, offering her her crutch. She took it gratefully, though her attention quickly turned back to the envelope above. Compared to her effortless swinging up above her slow plod across the deck was positively miserable. 

“What were you thinking?” Sumi hissed. “You busted an artery in your leg. If your stitches pop open there’s no one in a half-dozen miles that will be able to stop you from bleeding out.”

“Hey, in my defense I didn’t know what an artery even was until a few days ago. And from what you told me, you didn’t know what it was until, like, a couple months ago.”

“Wha-” Sumi shook her head, as baffled as she was frustrated. “It doesn’t matter how much you know about it, it just matters that you know it can kill you. Stick to the deck, alright? I’ll be on escort duty up here tonight. If you’re still bored we can talk then.”

Hikoshi scoffed, thumping her crutch against the ground irritably. “I’m not going up there just because I’m bored. I’m going up there because I’m the best one to fix it. They all know a little of this, a little of that, but I’m the only one besides maybe the captain that knows how to do it all. It’ll go a lot faster with my help.”

“Your life’ll end a lot faster, too. Just… give them advice from down here, alright? You don’t see anyone else with injuries like yours climbing up there, do you?”

Hikoshi huffed, but couldn’t disagree. The more seriously injured of the crew were in the cargo hold, content doing simple tasks like rearranging the spilled cargo and clearing out any animal remnants. 

“I’ll stay out of the rigging, but I’m not going below. I don’t even sleep down there.”

Sumi nodded thankfully, then cocked her head. “You slept on the deck?”

“Every night. Lot easier to fall asleep when you’ve got a view, you know?”

Hardly seemed comfortable , though. Sumi just shrugged, tacking up another entry on her mental list of Hikoshi’s eccentricities. She imagined Hikoshi had a similar list for her. As she hopped off the side of the ship to return to foraging she idly wondered whose list was longer. 

The day passed far too quickly, yet felt far too long. Constantly hauling wood in from the jungle was exhausting, and it didn’t help that she’d had to sprint back on several occasions when she began to hear shouting and the distinctive twang-snap of Souta’s bow. No one was hurt so far, but it was nerve racking. 

By the time the sun was setting Sumi and the carpenters she’d been helping had managed to arrange a semi-circle barricade on one side of the ship, walling off the weakened portion of the hull where the hole had been patched. They didn’t end up with enough time to surround the ship entirely, leaving the other side of the ship open to the jungle. The wooden hull was taller than the walls of her house, which made it taller than the stakes and palisade, but her home hadn’t been built with easily climbable ladders built into every clear surface. 

They’d set torches throughout the clearing, giving them a good line of sight for dozens of yards. Normally she and Souta would have preferred to keep their night vision intact, but the crew weren’t as used to it as they were, and it was a new moon that night. They figured the light was worth it. 

Sumi watched a moth flutter through the air, heading for a torch set on the railing near her. It burst into ash and spun to the ground before it even reached the flame proper. 

Sumi had taken over the guarding of the deck, Souta patrolling in circles around the ship. He was the only one with a ranged weapon between them, but his armor was far more robust. If anything managed to get the jump on them, leaping out from some hidden shadow, he was far more likely to survive first contact than she was. She really needed to get better armor. 

Hikoshi was on the deck with her, while most of the crew besides those assigned to watch duty had retired below. It would be twelve hours before the sun next rose, giving them plenty of time to rest. They’d also firmly locked the path down to the cargo hold shut, barring it with several large logs, which Sumi couldn’t help but take as a not-so-subtle sign of their faith in her and Souta’s hunting prowess.

She couldn’t blame them, she supposed. She was nervous. Hikoshi had obviously picked up on it, her usual chatter reduced to a few odd comments now and then. Sumi had spent time in the jungle at night, even outside shelter, but she’d never been confident about it. She was sure enough in her knowledge in skills that she could walk through the forest during the daytime and feel like, if not a predator, at least an equal. Things might attack her in the day, but they were on equal footing. 

The night was different. Compared to the animals and monsters that prowled around them right now, Sumi was deaf and blind. A pack of jagras in the daytime was her equal, but when the sun fell so did her odds. Their eyes were adapted to the night, their noses almost equally capable as a guide. They had padded feet that let them walk silently across the leafy floor, their tails keeping them balanced on the narrowest of pathways. All Sumi had to her advantage was her mind, and that rebellious bastard had been spending the last few hours outlining every specific thing she was at a disadvantage at instead of coming up with helpful plans.

The Listless had one ballista, mounted in the center of the deck, for self-defense. It was well-positioned to fend off approaching wyverns, capable of rotating to fire at any approaching threat, but it was borderline useless on the ground. The deck blocked any shot aimed downward at approaching Monsters, the envelope any flying beasts. Hikoshi was leaning against it nonetheless, keeping it cocked in case anything managed to make it up onto the deck. 

She’d openly reassured Hikoshi that it was highly unlikely, but they both knew that if she actually thought her help wouldn’t be needed she’d have told her to head down below, with the others. Now they stood together on an empty ship, staring out into the formless black.

Hikoshi whispered something Sumi didn’t catch.

“What was that?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. I was just saying that I liked being on the ship a lot more when it was in the air.”

Sumi chuckled, but didn’t look away from her careful surveilling of the trees. “Yeah, a proper city’s walls are a lot nicer when you’re on the ground, aren’t they? 

“I don’t get how the rest of you spend so much time down here. Feels like everything I see could kill me.”

“Weren’t you the one telling me how dangerous an aviator’s job is?”

“I guess, but it’s different, you know? When a rope starts snapping or a wyvern comes flying up, you know what you’re dealing with. It’s right in front of you, clear as day, and you’ve got five different types of protocol for how to deal with it. Down here?” She shuddered theatrically. “It’s dark, confusing, and close. I won’t be able to see something coming until it’s twenty yards away, much less the couple miles I’m used to. Nerve wracking.”

“So you’d prefer probably dying to a known cause than maybe dying to an unknown one?”

“Well, when you put it like that-” 

Her answer was cut off by the crack of Souta’s bow, echoed a half second later by the thump of wood impacting flesh. Souta shouted out from the darkness.

“Three at two o’clock!”

Sumi sprinted to the bow of the ship, conversation forgotten. She reached the railing to see Souta calmly backpedaling away from a pair of jagras, knocking another arrow. A single trio was hardly a threat, even if they managed to take him to the ground. Souta’s red carapace armor was tough enough that he could be used as a chew toy by the jagras for hours without any real concern for his safety. 

A second arrow landed square in the chest of the leading jagras, prompting the final one to flee. They may be made bolder by the night, but they weren’t stupid. It wouldn’t be back.

Sumi heard another loud snap, this time from behind her. She whipped around to find Hikoshi swinging the ballista upward, tracking something Sumi couldn’t see. Sumi swore, running back to the mid-deck as fast as she could. 

Hikoshi was aiming the ballista up into the rigging, but she hesitated on the trigger. If she fired at whatever-it-was right now and missed the bolt would go straight into the envelope, freeing precious gas. 

Sumi finally caught a glance at the attacker when she was a dozen feet from Hikoshi. It fell downward from the rigging, arms raised high as it snarled. It was some kind of ape, something Sumi had never seen before. It was smaller than her, with goat-like horns that curved upward just above its temples. Its black fur was visible in the air only by the way it blocked the light behind it. 

The ape landed on the deck just before the ballista, wrapping a fist around a bundle of the loaded bolts and ripping them free. They scattered across the deck while Hikoshi stumbled backward, crutch forgotten, scrambling away. 

The ape’s gaze turned to appreciate Sumi just as she reached it with her charge, pointed shield slamming directly into its shoulder.

Sumi was far from a veteran Hunter, but by this point in her career she’d charged into probably a dozen or more different species of animal, minor monster, or Monster. They’d had a variety of reactions to her assault, from trying to dodge, to trying to catch her, or even lowering their heads to charge back.

The ape did something she’d never expected. It accepted her blow casually, spinning to one side to send her flying past. As she went it slammed a backhanded blow into her spine, sending her sprawling to the deck. 

Sumi rolled to a stop, bewildered. That hadn’t felt like fighting a Monster. It had felt like sparring with Souta. It had used her momentum against her, not outright blocking or dodging the blow, but redirecting it. 

She rolled on her side, looking at the ape. On all fours it was shorter than her, but if it had somehow stood straight it would have just maybe equaled her height. Its eyes tracked her, head cocked to one side, evaluating her. 

It was intelligent. 

This was bad.

“Souta!” Sumi screamed, forcing herself to her feet. “Help us!”

She heard a distant curse, the most profane she’d ever heard out of Souta’s mouth. He was coming. She just had to protect Hikoshi until he got here.

The ape saw her standing, eyes flicking between her sword and her shield. It sniffed the air and huffed, turning to Hikoshi, who’d backpedaled all the way to the guardrail. 

Sumi charged again, bellowing. 

The ape’s attention was forced back to her. It pawed the deck once in preparation before she reached it, but she wasn’t going to try the same thing twice. 

Sumi dropped into a slide just before she made contact, thrusting her sword upward. The stomach she was aiming for wasn’t there, though. The ape had picked up a loose ballista bolt with a foot, spinning its full body to swing it like a club at Sumi.

If she hadn’t ducked it would have taken her in the lightly armored gut, but now it slammed into the top of her helmet. Sumi’s head was flung down by the force of it, back of her helmet hitting the wood with a thunderclap of pain and sound. 

Her momentum carried her sliding on the slick deck past the ape, nausea overwhelming her. She tried to reach for her belt, for the potion there, but her limbs were uncoordinated and jerky.

Somewhere away from her, Souta had taken the deck. His bow snapped, bolts of his own flying in pairs of two. She heard a snarl, thud, tearing, a scream, a guttural roar, and then her vision blacked out entirely. 

She shivered, cold spreading out from her core. Sumi opened her eyes to a still-dark sky, stars blurrier than they should be. Her potion bottle was pressed to her open lips, and when she became aware of that she began to drink purposefully. The viscous sludge threatened to make her cough, but her head was pounding too hard for her to risk the movement. 

Her eyes managed to focus enough to see who was helping her. Souta, faceplate raised, was looking down at her with concern. She didn’t stop drinking, but she gave him a purposeful blink a few times. That should be enough to say what she wanted, right?

As the potion continued to work its way through her body, the cool flush reaching her head much slower than it normally did, she began to recognize just how out of it she was. Her eyes weren’t quite aligned, leaving a ghostly Souta floating half-overlayed with the real one, though she wasn’t sure which was the real one, funnily enough? She heard feet on the deck, lots of them, and voices filtered through the ringing that she’d only just realized she was hearing.

The stars were getting closer. Bigger in the sky, at least. She felt the deck sway beneath her and the thought made her retch, curling up on the deck suddenly. Souta pulled the bottle away from her as she rolled onto her side, coughing and heaving in equal measures. She pressed a palm to the deck, eyes wrenched shut, willing herself to come to her senses. 

As she took deep breaths, interrupted by the occasional hiccup, she picked up on the fact that the coolness spreading through her wasn’t just from the potion. There was a strong breeze, the air it carried too cold to be from the jungle. She opened her eyes, glancing toward the railing off to her right.

The ground, quite noticeably, wasn’t there. She stared through the gaps to see empty blackness rolling into the distance. All she could see was a cloud. Beneath her. 

Sumi threw her nausea out of her mind, pulling herself forward on hands and knees. She ignored the sounds Souta made, bringing herself to the edge of the ship and shoving her head through the gap in the railing to look down below. 

Her eyes met nothing. A black void stretched into the impossible distance, the hull of the Listless her only frame of reference. A moonless night, nowhere near civilization. With nothing to light the ground below it might as well have disappeared. She couldn’t prove that anything beyond the ship even existed. 

Souta pulled her back by the collar of her armor, flipping her over. He said some more things, and the meanings of the sounds slowly slipped into place.

“...you alright? How’re you feeling?”

“I feel-” She started to explain, then re-prioritized. “Wait. More important. Souta, we are flying. Like, in the sky . How high are we?”

“Fourty-five-hundred above sea level!” Hikoshi’s voice yelled out from somewhere. Had Sumi been yelling? She snapped a finger next to her ear and heard only a dull thump. Yep, she’d been yelling. She brought her voice down to a volume that sounded muffled to her.

“Help me up. I’ve got to see this.”

Souta placed a hand on her chestplate, pinning her to the deck. “Drink more of your potion and I’ll let you get up.” 

She sneered at him, but accepted the offered bottle. Her hands were still shaking. Maybe he had a point. 

After several long gulps Souta helped her sit up, letting her scoot closer to the edge of the ship. A cloud was drifting past, beneath them. Sumi’d never seen the top side of a cloud before. 

She still couldn’t see anything of the ground. The envelope took up most of the view above her, giving her only a narrow band on the horizon where starlight was blotted out in a crisp line, her only evidence of the earth beneath her. 

“Why are we flying? I wasn’t out for a whole day, was I?”

“Yeah, Sumi,” Souta rolled his eyes, “We left you unconscious on the deck for the last twenty-four hours. Just count yourself lucky the sailors bothered to step around you instead of on you.”

“Har-har, smartass.”

“But no, it’s probably been a bit more than an hour. We had to take off after the Rajang attacked us.”

“Rajang? Was that the monkey?”

Souta’s expression darkened. “Calling a Rajang a monkey is like calling a Rathian a dragonfly. Just right enough to make it funny how wrong you are.”

“Oh, come on. It was shorter than me, Souta. There’s not a lot of people that fit that description, much less Monsters. ”

“True. And it nearly killed us both. That was a baby, Sumi. Probably only a few months old.”

Sumi blinked at his words, paying more attention to his armor. It was covered in dirt, and a trickle of dried blood was running down from his temple. She actually let out a gasp as she realized that his carapace breastplate, made from the looted scales of a Rathalos, had been bent , the front plate of his chest piece curving up and away from his body instead of in. She could see dark blood at its bottom edges, probably from where the Rajang had gripped it. Sumi hadn’t known something like that was even possible. 

“Did you kill it?”

Souta snorted. “No. Barely got it to leave, in fact. Only managed to hit it with a single arrow, and that just pissed it off. Only took off once the sailors started coming up from below to help, since it thought it was outnumbered. If it had realized they weren’t Hunters then we’d all be dead right now.”

Sumi leaned back, trying to take calming breaths of the cold air. The nausea was still receding, but it wasn’t gone yet. 

“So why’d we take off early, if you managed to scare it off?”

“Rajang live with their mother and father for the first couple years of their life, and often even spend time with other recent mothers. One of the only known Monsters that displays proper pack behavior. If it had come back with help…”

Sotua let the implication dangle, conclusion obvious. 

Sumi heard the rhythmic thump of Hikoshi’s crutch approaching from behind. She passed Sumi to lean out over the rail, curly hair trailing behind her in the breeze. 

“Thankfully, I’m the best.” She said modestly. Souta rolled his eyes, but didn’t interrupt. “Figured out how to get us airworthy in an hour flat. That takes some skill, right there.”

Sumi didn’t know enough about airships to agree or disagree, but the fact that Souta wasn’t mocking her bravado was evidence enough.

“What’d you have to do?”

Hikoshi shrugged. “Dump most of our cargo, first off. Sawed off most of the bow, until we started getting lift, and then we had to dump most of our food and other supplies just to get us higher than skimming the treetops. We were planning to fashion replacement pieces, thin the hull up in some strategic places to lose the weight, but turns out having a nearly-dead Hunter yelling at us to get airborne and a mostly-dead Hunter splayed out in the middle of the deck is a great motivator.” 

“Happy to help with the team-building exercise.” Souta offered.

“Appreciated, Hunter. When’s the next time you’ll be available for a repeat?”

“Exactly never, fortunately. If I ever see a Rajang again I’m turning the other way and leaving you people as bait.”

Sumi elbowed him, but Hikoshi laughed and turned around, offering Sumi her hand to pull her up.

“So, what do you think of the view?”

Sumi leaned forward, looking over the side. Standing on her feet and looking into an endless abyss while the ship swayed beneath her made her head spin, but not as much as it provoked her sense of awe.

“It’s amazing. Never imagined I’d have a literal bird’s-eye view.” 

“Worth nearly getting killed?”

Sumi waved dismissively. “Eh, nearly dead and dead are totally different things. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.” Sumi squinted into the distance, trying to spot anything in the direction the ship was heading. She could only see more black. “Where are we heading right now?”

“Narrowstrait, hopefully. If we overshoot we’ll be stuck over the Guassian Sea for a week before we have another chance to land.”

“Didn’t you say you threw our supplies overboard?”

“Yeah, if that happens we’d all starve to death. Or dehydrate to death, I guess, if you want to get technical about it. Don’t worry, most airships have a pecking order for who eats who first, if they get stuck over an ocean. You’re not on the roster, but the survivors’ll probably want at least one Hunter, so you should be fine.”

Sumi raised an eyebrow and glanced at Souta, trying to get some kind of confirmation from him. He offered her an uncomfortable shrug.

“Okay, I feel like I’m getting pranked here, but I can’t just let that one dangle. You guys really have a list for who gets eaten first if the ship runs out of food?”

Hikoshi laughed, and Sumi heard a few other chuckles from the crew working around the deck. Maybe she was still talking too loud.

“Not officially, but there was a big drama a few years back when a crew of thirty got thrown off course by a typhoon, came crawling back two months late as a crew of ten. Ever since then the cannibal pecking order has been a common enough galley chat topic that we’ve pretty much got it ironed out. But don’t worry, if we see the sea and no city we’ll just put the ship down on the beach. We’ve got you two to hunt us food, thankfully.”

Sumi was starting to think being a Hunter was a considerably better job than working on an airship. She looked around the ship, trying to guess the ages of the crew. There weren’t any she would guess to be over thirty, besides the captain. He had to be at least in his forties. 

“So how long do we have to Narrowstrait? Are we going to have to set down beforehand to hunt food?”

Hikoshi licked her thumb and stuck it out into the breeze, dangling perilously with only her casted leg still on the deck. Her brows scrunched up for a moment, then she nodded to herself.

“I’d say sixteen hours or so, if the current stays about the same pace. Down here at the equator it shouldn’t vary too much, so I’d give that only an hour or so margin of error.”

Souta whistled, impressed. “Fancy thumb you got there, huh?”

Hikoshi shrugged. “Spend your whole life on an airship and you tend to pick up a few tricks. Go figure.”

They lapsed into idle conversation as the night carried on, the cotton in Sumi’s head slowly clearing. Souta hadn’t been to Narrowstrait before, so he spent his time asking Hikoshi questions about the city. Sumi listened attentively, fascinated by every description and the casual details they both seemed to take for granted. Before she’d become a Hunter the only strangers she’d ever seen had been the occasional traveling caravan, and they’d only stayed in town for two days at the longest. 

She struggled to visualize Hikoshi’s vague descriptions. Dozens of streets, apparently twisting and overlapping in mostly random patterns. A stone wall surrounding the entire thing, three stories high, taller than the tavern that had been her only reference for ‘large’. Thousands upon thousands of people, so many that they could cover the street and leave not a single cobblestone visible below. That impressed her, too-- using cobblestones for something as mundane as a street. She supposed it made sense, since a dirt road would have been unusable any time it rained with that many people, but all her life building stones had been reserved for the hearths that made up the centerpiece of a home. Meanwhile, apparently, most of Narrowstrait had been built with stone.

Hikoshi, naturally, alternated between excitedly describing the various cities she’d visited and teasing Sumi for her isolatingly rural upbringing. Sumi couldn’t help it, of course, and they both knew that. Her village was still too new to have earned a name, its permanency nowhere near guaranteed. She’d been the first child born in the village, and she’d never left it. The trips were simply too expensive and dangerous to justify for something like sight-seeing. 

When Sumi finally began feeling recovered from her wound at the Rajang’s hands she descended below, taking one of the depressingly common empty hammocks. With the cargo hold empty the wide-open space felt like it should echo, though it wasn’t nearly large enough for it. 

She considered slipping out of her armor to get comfortable, but when she tried to pull her helmet off she found a deep dent gouging into her skull, pressing against a massive bruise hard enough to make her curse. Between the wound and her recent experiences she decided to keep the armor on until they reached the city. She could only hope she wasn’t going to end up as paranoid as Souta.

Chapter Text

    Sumi woke to the sound of feet thumping on the deck above her. Muffled shouts called back and forth, overlapping voices asking for this and that while yelling at someone to get over there, no, there! 

She groaned, throwing her arm over her eyes. They were either coming in to port, which would mean she’d slept far too long, or they were preparing to fight off some Monster’s attack, which she really didn’t want to deal with. She argued with herself for a while longer, trying to decide whether or not she could justify just a few more minutes in the gently rocking hammock. 

As usual, her conscience won out. As usual, she grumbled about it the entire way as she swung out of her hammock. 

Daylight was filtering in from the hatch that led to the upper deck, which lifted her spirits. As awe-inspiring as the view had been at night, she’d been anxiously awaiting actually being able to see something. The other hammocks were all empty, so it seemed she’d been alone in oversleeping. 

She stomped up the stairs to a bustling ship, aviators climbing the rigging and making dozens of myriad adjustments that she didn’t understand the slightest bit of. She caught sight of Hikoshi near the helm, silently watching the work beside the captain with her crutch tucked disdainfully under her arm. Souta was by the helm as well, though he was looking off the side of the ship at something down below.

Sumi weaved her way over to them, doing her best to stay out of the way as aviators dashed every which way. Souta heard her approach and waved her over. 

“How’s your head feeling?” He asked, characteristic cheer fully restored following the previous night’s brutal beatdown. 

“Fine, as long as I don't try and take my helmet off. Got a nasty dent that’s keeping it pinned on.”

“Yowch. Better on than off, I guess.” He returned to his gazing over the side. “Take a look down there.”

Sumi leaned over the side, following his pointing finger. Well, she did after a moment. She had to get her breath back first. 

In the night the forest had receded, giving way to lush grasslands that stretched in every direction. Sumi had never left the jungle before, so she knew her perspective was likely skewed, but the trees that grew here seemed impossibly sparse and short. They grew in loose clumps, hardly a branch overlapping, leaving the majority of the space to be taken up by only tall grass and occasional bushes. Intermittent rivers twisted their way across the land, carving small hills that nonetheless paled next to the dramatic plateaus and waterfalls she was accustomed to. 

The world seemed to swim beneath her while she sailed over it, ‘dizzying heights’ revealing itself to be a surprisingly literal euphemism. She realized that she wasn’t even sure if the trees were small, or if she was just so far away that she couldn’t judge their size. 

She turned her gaze away, looking farther afield. She could see so far. Before she’d left the village the farthest thing she’d ever looked at had been the other side of the tree wall, a few hundred yards away. 

Now she felt as if the entire planet was on display beneath her. She noticed the peculiar tint that the horizon’s edge began to take, the grasslands growing bluer and fading away in the distance. If the effect hadn’t been present in every direction she would have assumed that the grass really was blue in the distance, but it wouldn’t have made sense for them to be in the dead center of an island of green. She could only assume it was some illusion of the height they were at, a trick of the eyes. Did being in a blue sky really make everything else look bluer, like she were looking through stained glass?

She finally managed to force her focus back onto what Souta had called her over for in the first place. A crowd of brown lumps was meandering through the grasslands, perhaps a few dozen of them in a vague circle. They were heading towards a river at a plodding pace, and the Listless would easily overtake them in a few minutes. 

Souta handed her his spyglass with his usual cautions for her to be careful with it, and not to drop it. She wondered how long it would be before he trusted her with the shoddy tool more than he did with deadly weapons. 

She extended the spyglass, centering it on the distant shapes. To her surprise, she recognized them from Souta’s notes. Apceros. An armored quadruped that traveled in herds for mutual defense. She could see the distinctive tail emerging from their shelled backs, ending in a spiked mace. The smallest of them traveled in the center of the herd, chewing heaping mouthfuls of the grass that had been trampled by their elders ahead of them. She didn’t think the young would have been tall enough to see over the grass if they had been on their own.

The adults were significantly larger. Their backs were large enough to hold a room of her old house, and each of the spikes on their tail could skewer her through three times over. They had spikes protruding from their cheeks and laterally outward from the middle sides of their shells, presumably to prevent a predator from flipping them to gain easy access to their soft underbellies. 

She snapped the telescope closed, handing it back to Souta, who reverently slipped it into the only armored pocket on his belt. “Those are Apceros. I remember your notes on them.”

“Got it in one, Sumi. A pretty good size herd of them, too, migrating to warmer weather now that summer’s coming up on its end. Captain Hikosen, care to elaborate on your request?”

Sumi jumped, having forgotten that they were right near the Captain’s wheel, and that he and Hikoshi had been there the entire time. 

“Our ship has experienced significant damage as a result of our contract to bring you two to Narrowstrait. While the Guild’s standard insurance will cover the repairs, they will not cover the lost revenue incurred while we await the work’s completion. I asked of your teacher that he descend to Hunt some of the creatures below, to help offset these losses. He responded that any unplanned Hunt would have to be approved by both Hunters aboard the ship, and so I await your answer.”

Captain Hikosen was being oddly formal, even for him. Now that she thought of it, he’d hardly spoken to them at all since leaving the tavern, aside from the occasional order. She wondered what had caused the change, but not enough to interrupt or change the topic. 

“Didn’t you have to throw, like, literally everything overboard just to get this ship off the ground? I can’t imagine you could carry the weight of one of an entire Apceros.”

Hikoshi piped up unprompted before Captain Hikosen could respond. He tightened his lips to a thin line, but let her speak. 

“We couldn’t carry the whole thing, just the more worthwhile parts. I got a bit overzealous with the tossing stuff earlier, because Souta seemed so panicked. Wanted to get in the air fast, you know.”

“Which I appreciate, by the way.” Souta said with a nod to her. She smiled back. Captain Hikosen picked up the thread of conversation.

“Yes, a more precise accounting of our load earlier this morning confirmed we have some free tonnage to work with. As we have spent the night and morning without rations for the crew, I also intended to allow my sailors to descend in groups after the Hunt to allow them some well-earned meals. A single Apceros should be more than enough to fuel their morale until we reach Narrowstrait. Do you find these plans amenable?” 

Sumi looked to Souta, who gave his usual response, an ambivalent ‘your-call’ shrug. She looked down at the Apceros herd, considering. They weren’t true Monsters, so they should be able to handle them without much danger, even if they’d be the biggest animal she’d Hunted since the Great Jagras. 

“Sure. Your crew bought me enough food at the tavern, it’s only fair I pay them back. Souta and I can bag you an Apceros.” 

A cheer went up from the deckhands behind her, the entire crew somehow managing to have overheard the conversation while continuing in their calamitous work. Their abilities of communication without any cohesion continued to baffle her. 

When none of the crew changed what they were doing, she realized that they’d already begun the process of descending. It was touching that they’d already developed enough faith in her to believe she’d make the ‘right’ decision, but it was a little bit nerve wracking. 

When Souta had taught her about symbiosis he’d listed Hunters and civilians as one of his many examples, citing the mutual benefit and dependency they had for one another. She’d understood the comparison intellectually, but actually being a part of it felt odd. She was barely a Hunter, yet the entire crew had been throwing their weight behind her, feeding and aiding her in exchange for the protection she supposedly provided. She could only hope her inexperience didn’t lead them to disaster, like sheep following a blind shepherd off a cliff. 

They dropped about a mile ahead of the Apceros’ path, Sumi and Souta lowered down on ropes that ended in large metal spikes. Souta hopped just before he landed, driving his straight into the ground to anchor it in place. Sumi tried the same, but only drove it a quarter of the way in. She had to bounce on it a few more times to properly set it. 

The wind drew the lines tighter above them while the Listless continued to drift, until they finally snapped taut. Sumi watched the anchors for a while until she was sure they would hold, though Hikoshi had assured her the wind was gentle today. 

Sumi walked over to Souta, following his anchor line with her eyes. She was too short to see over the tall grass, though he was easily a head above it when he stood on his tiptoes. She purposefully ignored that fact. 

Together they set off for the Apceros herd, chatting strategy as they went. There were several problems to solve that Sumi could see already. The Apceros’ shell was too hard for either of their weapons to pierce, at least not without a problematically cruel amount of repeated blows, and the herd was fiercely protective of one another, instinctually driven to defend one another. They would have to find a way to separate an individual from the herd first, then find some way to get it to expose its underside. 

Getting a shot underneath it would likely be the hardest part. She knew she’d gotten stronger since becoming a Hunter, and Souta was likely a good bit stronger than her, but neither of them were going to be flipping a several ton animal on its side any time soon. 

“Are they faster than us?” Sumi asked.

“No, not really. If they get in a panic they might be able to sprint nearly as fast as we can jog, but they couldn’t keep that pace up for long. That’s the price they pay for all that armor.”

“Well, what if I just run underneath one, then? You wouldn’t have room to draw your bow, but I could gut one easily enough from beneath, even if I was on hands and knees.”

Souta tilted his head with pursed lips, nodding. “Yeah, you could. I see two ways that works out, though. Either you get stomped to death straight away, or you manage to get a good few cuts in, lethal ones, which would be followed up by a half-dozen tons of Apceros collapsing on top of you.”

“Huh.” Sumi tapped a finger on her leg armor. “Point taken.”

They tossed ideas back and forth as they forged their way through the grass, heading to intercept the Apceros herd. Souta said Apceros didn’t really deviate from their path often when migrating, only adjusting their path to avoid an obstacle or seek out some particular shelter or source of food. Apparently, in the days before compasses and high-quality maps had been commonplace, they’d been used by travelers as guides. Even now their uncannily straight paths were used as landmarks during the migration season. 

“Do predators ever exploit that predictability, then? It wouldn’t be hard to set up an ambush if you know exactly where they’re going.”

“I suppose some Monsters might, but they’re still Apceros, aren’t they? They don’t have great eyesight and their sense of smell isn’t exceptional, so you can hide from them easily enough without fancy plans. The hard part is getting past their defenses.”

They continued their strategy chat as they walked. Oddly enough, the grass was shrinking in height as they approached the river. Sumi was used to open water being a beacon for lush growth, but that didn’t seem to be happening here for some reason. 

The river was old, clearly. The banks that surrounded it were steep, requiring her to hop down from edge to ledge like a lizard. They walked along the thin muddy strip that the river’s ebbing had exposed for a while, deciding on a final strategy. 

It felt good to be meandering through the wild with Souta, chatting casually about a lower-stakes Hunt. It felt like what being a Hunter should be, in an ideal world. Doing something important and worthwhile, but not critical, with no lives on the line. She wished every Hunt could be like this. 

They crawled up the embankment to the shallow grass, which now only came up to Sumi’s thighs. The Apceros were approaching from a distance, some few hundred yards away. She could pick out the turtle-shell patterning on their backs now, the signature armor growing in raised plates. Their tails swung lazily from side to side with their gait, mace-like spikes intimidating even at a distance. It seemed the leaders of the herd were the largest, and they lowered their heads to graze only seldomly. Sumi pulled out her notebook while they approached, dipping her brush to begin taking notes. 

Apceros Herd Observations, Fifth of Autumn.

It consists of some thirty Apceros, a fifth or sixth of which seem to be juveniles. The largest members of the herd travel at the front of the pack, rarely eating, while those on the sides and back constantly graze. The herd seems to decrease in size along the perimeter, with the smallest adults at the back. It is unclear whether this is defensive or evidence of hierarchy. What is clear is that the juveniles travel in the center of the herd to be well protected from any attacks, as their diminutive clubs wouldn’t pose much of a threat to a predator. Fortunately for them, we do not intend to bag ourselves a juvenile. 

Sumi slipped her notebook back away, pressing a disposable sheet between the pages to make sure the ink didn’t smear. She’d heard there was such a thing as quick-drying ink. She’d have to pick some up in Narrowstrait, if there was any to be found. 

They put their plan into action when the Apceros were about a hundred yards from the riverbank. True to Souta’s words, their senses were abysmal. Sumi had done little more than crouch in the grass as she approached and gone entirely unnoticed by the herd. She supposed they didn’t need to be particularly perceptive when most of their threats would necessarily be building-sized. 

She was close enough to hear their snuffling breaths and smell their odd musk before one of the herd finally noticed her. While taking a languid bite of grass its head suddenly reared up, a startled bellow sounding from its throat. 

Sumi leapt up, shouting loudly and smashing her sword into her shield. The entire herd reacted with bellows of their own, dropping into low stances and bringing their tails high into the air, arching towards Sumi. Beneath the cacophony Sumi could hear the terrified high-pitched trumpets of the juveniles, who were sprinting to hide beneath the nearest adult. 

The herd quickly collapsed into a defensive perimeter, shell spikes and clubs facing Sumi in a wall of living barbs. Now came the hard part. 

Sumi took off at a run, yelling her challenge. The Apceros held their wall with the poise of professional soldiers, their only response little more than a shifting of their stance, preparation to swing. 

Sumi didn’t have experience with Apceros, but the tools they had to face her were simple, and that made them predictable. 

The second she came into range the closest Apceros slammed its tail down, a spiked club larger than her torso flying through the air at her fast enough to whistle. 

She dove to one side, rolling back into her sprint in a single smooth motion. The next Apceros swung, and now she was too close to dodge in time. She ran to the side, meeting the swing with the point of her Tigrex-enhanced shield. 

She felt the shock reverberate through the shield, down her gauntlet, into her armor and out through her feet. The grass was flattened around her a couple yards, her gear distributing the force of the blow as best it could. What it couldn’t absorb was still enough to force her to her knees, grunting in exertion. 

The Apceros’ tail rebounded into the air, allowing her to launch forward again. In a few more strides she’d be close enough to touch one. 

She aimed for the center of the Apceros’ body, dropping into a slide. They could easily crush her with a stomp, but when they were in such close proximity to one another they’d have no room to move enough to hit her. She could slide underneath before it could disentangle itself and gain access to the unprotected inner circle. 

The Apceros, however, seemed to be aware of this. As soon as she slipped into her slide its two closest legs collapsed, driving its spiked back into the dirt at an angle. The few foot gap disappeared behind an impenetrable shell. 

Sumi’s foot thudded into the shell, forcing her to a stop. A shadow flicked past her, and she knew the club was coming. She did the only thing she could. 

Sumi kicked off with her other leg, throwing herself up and onto the back of the Apceros. She felt the woosh-thud of a lethal impact impaling the ground behind her as she clawed her way upward.

The Apceros reared, trying to throw her off as it bleated in panic. Sumi nearly lost her footing, but the multi-ton animal couldn’t do much more than shake its back like a geriatric wet dog. She dropped to a knee and held on, mind flying a mile a minute as she tried to find some way to salvage the plan. 

She didn’t get the time to think. The Apceros’ carefully maintained perimeter shattered to pieces around her as the animals fought between their instincts to face the threat and maintain the wall. Little ones scattered in all directions, drawing off several of the herd that charged after them. 

The largest of the herd, one of the ones she’d seen at the front, didn’t scatter. It headed directly for Sumi in a bizarre sideways skipping run, tail lashing furiously. Sumi thought about throwing herself off her current ride, but couldn’t see anywhere to land that wasn’t going to end up with her smashed by a club or trampled. 

The large Apceros reached her in seconds, trumpeting in furious rage. Its club tail shot downward with all the force of a lightning bolt, faster by far than anything she’d seen so far. 

She didn’t have time to think, much less time to dodge. All she did was let go of her hold, letting the Apceros’ thrashing throw her away. 

The spiked club struck where she’d been a millisecond before, the shell of the afflicted Apceros cracking thunderously. 

She landed elsewhere on its back just as her ride’s legs gave out, its bulk hitting the ground hard enough to throw up a cloud of dust. The large Apceros’ club lifted away, one long spike stained red. The segment of plated shell had shattered, exposing a pink and red fleshy mess. 

The large Apceros looked at the wound, sniffing while glancing between its packmate’s wound and Sumi. She dropped into a cautious crouch, ready to dodge again, but it was unnecessary. The Apceros huffed loudly and came to some inscrutable decision, slowly retreating sideways. Its beady eyes watched Sumi carefully all the while. 

She saw Souta running towards her in the distance, an arrow knocked to his bow. She gave him a proud wave, calling him over. The plan had failed, but the Hunt was successful. 

Parts of it had gone as intended, at least. She’d managed to close the distance to the Apceros herd without injury, and she’d managed to get them to scatter. But what she’d been trying to do after that was drive an isolated member towards the river bank, where they’d found an unstable patch of sand. It would have hopefully given out under the Apceros’ weight and dumped it sideways down the gulch, exposing its vulnerable underbelly for Souta to fill with arrows. Sumi hadn’t counted on assistance from the Apceros themselves. 

She slid down the Apceros’ shell, landing near its head as Souta approached. She started to talk to him, proud of their kill, until she heard the wheezing breath still being forced out of the Apceros. 

Sumi immediately dropped into a crouch, inspecting it closely. Its eyes were open and tracking her, dilated in absolute terror. Flutters of movement raced along its skin, the ghosts of commands that its muscles clearly weren’t obeying. It was trying to stand, to run, to fight, but its body wouldn’t cooperate. It had been paralyzed. 

Sumi immediately drew her sword, slamming it into the Apceros’ eye. Its movement didn’t stop immediately, so she gruesomely swirled the blade around, trying to find its brain. After an indeterminately long and agonizing moment, the creature fell still. 

Sumi sighed in relief, pulling her sword from its head. She wiped her blade on the grass, cleaning it as best she could before slipping it back into her sheath. She’d have to thoroughly scrub them both, later. 

“Sorry about that,” Sumi said to Souta, still out of breath. “Didn’t realize it was still alive. I wasn’t going to let it suffer like that.” 

“You did good.” Souta reassured her, patting her shoulder. He reached into his belt and fired off a green flare, the sign for a successful Hunt. The Listless wasn’t far, certainly close enough for them to have been watching the Hunt with telescopes, but Souta was a stickler for procedure. “Let’s see what we can salvage before the buffet crew arrives.” 

They set to the task of examining the Apceros corpse, pulling a variety of instruments from their gear. Sumi crawled along its body, taking measurements of various points and calling them out to Souta, who recorded them on scrap paper to properly notate later. Apceros were common, having been Hunted for generations, so there was little scientific value on being so precise in their recordings aside from the practice it provided Sumi.  

The shell turned out to be too tough to cut, as expected. She could have used her sword and hacked at the connective tissues to free the entire thing, but they had little use for an armor plate the size of a bedroom floor. The only thing that interested her were the fragments of the shell that had been shattered. Several large chunks were wedged in the wound, the largest of which was the size of her torso. 

Sumi yanked the gore-covered piece out of the wound, comparing its size to her breastplate. It fit well, aside from extending outward just a little bit too far on the sides, but was otherwise ideal. It even had a gentle curve, much like her original chestpiece. 

She presented it to Souta, asking his opinion on using it as an armor piece. 

He rubbed his chin for a moment, looking at it. “I’d say there’s no way for you to attach it to your armor, but that’s more your department than mine. You sure that it’s stronger than the armor you’ve already got, though? That’s a lot of weight to add just for style points, if it isn’t.” 

“I’m almost certain it is, but let’s find out.” Sumi suggested, gesturing to the Apceros corpse. When they’d made Sumi’s armor they’d first used Souta’s bow as their benchmark, trying to see if any of their test pieces could bounce one of his arrows. It had turned out that none of them could, steel simply inadequate to deal with the forces involved. They’d finally found a design that could withstand a single shot from his bow, but only when he’d loosed the arrow from the other side of the village clearing. 

Souta drew his bow now, standing ten feet away from the Apceros corpse. He pulled the string back to his cheek casually, though Sumi knew from first hand experience how frustratingly difficult the bow was to draw. She wasn’t certain if she could have managed it even now. 

Souta loosed the arrow, which hissed toward the Apceros shell. With a loud crack! it bounced off the shell, spinning away to fall into the dirt.

“Looks good to me. It might get more brittle over time, since it’s not connected to anything living, but I didn’t even scratch the shell. It’s got to be better than your current armor, at least.”

Sumi nodded her agreement, picking up the piece of fragmented armor. She crawled back onto the shell, digging through the wound for more shell fragments. She found only a few other pieces large enough to be usable, though she wasn’t quite sure what she’d do with them. 

Those collected, she awaited the crew of the Listless. Souta headed back to the ship to escort them to the kill site. Even if it wasn’t as oppressive as the dense jungle she was used to, the tall grass did just as good of a job hiding the approach of a predator. 

To her surprise, Souta didn’t return with a carving crew in tow. She watched a dozen of the crew descend the ropes in the distance, then there was nothing for a while. Eventually she watched the anchor lines of the Listless swing around, growing taut in a different direction. The Listless was being hauled towards the kill instead of the other way around. 

She stood on tiptoes atop of her kill, shading her eyes. Most of the crew of the Listless had descended to the ground, taking hold of the ropes and hauling them forward. The ship itself was slowly descending, its buoyancy adjusted to a slight negative to make it easier to pull. At least that way they didn’t have to fight the ship’s momentum and the force pulling it skyward. 

She was eventually greeted by a group of sweaty but excited aviators. Souta had helped pull the ship over, and he was now busy pounding its anchors into the ground beside the Apceros. The brief stampede had flattened most of the grass in the immediate area, and what was left was stomped clear as the remaining crew aboard the Listless lowered supplies to prepare the Apceros. Within minutes the sight of her kill had been turned into a miniature camp. 

She used her sword to peel away the Apceros’ thick skin, which was too tough for the aviator’s knives to cut. Skinning something this big felt less like field prepping and more like renovating a home, she reflected. 

The aviators lamented that they didn’t have the free tonnage to haul away the armored shell entirely, which apparently would have sold for quite a solid amount. It could’ve been used to bolster city defenses, as plating on a navy ship, or simply to decorate the home of a wealthy merchant. Instead it would sit in the fields, decomposing into uselessness. Without preservative measures it would be too brittle for use within a week, too soon for them to repair the ship and return to retrieve it. 

They had to settle for the (admittedly delicious) meat, some of which was being devoured in an impromptu feast, the rest smoked into rations for future journeys. It wasn’t the same as cash in their pockets, but it would at least ease the budgetary strain on restocking the ship. Some of the aviators managed to peel away a few personal knick-knacks, excited to be so close to a Hunt for the first time and even more excited to have something to show off in a bar to prove it. 

Hiksohi eventually made her way down the rope, not content to smell the simmering food from above. Sumi tried to find it in herself to worry about her injured leg, but she moved with such practiced confidence on the ropes that Sumi couldn’t convince herself it was dangerous. 

The crew spent the next few hours divvying up the Apceros, using up what they could with limited preparation. It irked Sumi to leave so much of a kill behind, but there was nothing to be done. The scavengers that she’d spotted occasional glimpses of would finish up the rest. 

She spent the impromptu midday feast chatting with Souta and Hikoshi, snacking on Apceros meat. It was tough stuff, difficult to chew, but still excellent. Hikoshi had pilfered the captain’s spyglass and watched the whole fight, which she recounted in boisterous detail to both Sumi and the crew. 

Obligatory bragging done, they moved onto other topics. Sumi and Souta discussed various ways for her to attach her looted armor to her old pieces, testing various arrangements of the three pieces she had and deciding where they would do the most good. 

Hikoshi rattled off question after question, so enthralled by the fight that Souta decided to turn it into an improvised quiz for Sumi. He goaded the other girl into asking after more and more complicated topics, only answering something himself when he was clearly leading her to some new topic he knew Sumi should be familiar with, though she occasionally wasn’t. Sumi tried to find it in herself to be irritated at the study session right after a successful Hunt, but Hikoshi’s enthusiasm was too infectious to let her frustration truly take hold. 

It was around two in the afternoon when the aviators finished up their dissection, packing away the supplies with the same efficiency they’d brought them down with. Bundles of smoked meat were raised up by cargo hooks, which then descended to pull up the crew in groups of two. Sumi and Souta were the last ones up, pulling the anchors from the ground and letting themselves be pulled up to the ship as it slowly began to float away. 

Sumi watched the ground recede away with a sense of satisfaction warming her. She’d only been away from her village for a short time, but she already knew that she’d made the right choice. She couldn’t wait to arrive in Narrowstrait. 

Chapter Text

Narrowstrait came into view slowly, looming on the blue horizon far too long for Sumi’s taste. She knew now what her village had looked like from the air, and had been expecting a much larger version of something similar. 

The actual city was far more. She had been told it had dozens of streets, but she hadn’t understood that the streets weren’t just decided by the most convenient path to walk from place to place, but rather by the virtue of being the only spot where buildings weren’t. Virtually every free space within the city had been used to place a building, and every one of them was at least as tall as the walls, which were themselves taller than anything Sumi had ever seen built. The streets, of which there were more than a hundred, zigged and zagged and intersected in bizarre and random fashion, even though the cobblestones they were built of had been laid with exacting precision. 

As the Listless drew closer she could discern details on the buildings, shock filling her as she spotted large glass windows dotted in regular patterns. In her village the only windows had been small and high, little more than slits through which light could filter in without allowing a predator an entrance. Thin glass panes taller than she was seemed an impossible risk, but she supposed that wasn’t the case when you lived surrounded by sturdy walls. 

Other airships dotted the sky above the city, some docked down below. True to Captain Hikosen’s words, none even vaguely approached the size of the Listless, even as damaged as it was. Most had their hulls snugly attached to their small envelopes, not dangling beneath like she was familiar with. She didn’t know why that was. She also saw a strange convoy of ground-hugging airships snaking along the shoreline outside the city, being slowly towed into the distance. 

White dots on the blue ocean grew more defined, revealing themselves to be the cloth of sailing ships. Most of their hulls dwarfed their airship sisters, propelled by towers of complicated rigging and textiles. For every airship that Sumi could see there were ten sailing ships, so many that the docks they traveled to and from were packed full, leaving a great number simply waiting their turn in the harbor. Beyond them she could see a distant island, still blurry, which must be the origin of Narrowstrait’s ‘ Strait’ . As she gawked at the many miles of open water that separated the island and city she wondered if any of these people actually understood what Narrow meant. 

The Listless began a slow descent, one of the aviators running to the ship holding a bundle of multi-colored flags. She overheard that the wind was apparently running fast for the day, which made more than a few people antsy, worrying her in turn. She’d only seen this ship land once, and it had done so in a field that was open for many miles. Trying to land in a specific spot in the city, pushed only by the wind at their backs, seemed as easy as trying to land on the head of a needle. 

The aviator at the front began waving her flags in sequence, her motions answered by a tiny flashing speck on the ground. The aviator shouted some jargon to the captain, little more than numbers and letters. The captain snapped off several orders in rapid succession to which the crew responded like ants having their nest kicked, sprinting in every direction. Sumi felt her gut lift for a moment as they began to descend even faster. 

The city grew sharper as they fell towards it, the wind now loud enough to whistle past her ears. When it seemed inevitable that they would be crashing into the city she felt her weight suddenly increase, the sensation accompanied by a series of pressurized hisses from the envelope above. Their descent was rapidly arrested while the spires of the tallest rooftops began to rise higher than the deck. Aviators threw ropes overboard in huge bundles, which went taut a moment later. The ship jerked to a stop, twisting slightly in the wind. They’d made it. 

A smatter of relieved laughter and cheering broke out among the crew, celebratory hugs traded all around. They hadn’t acted worried in the slightest throughout the whole ordeal, as far as she could tell, but that seemed to have been more of an act than she’d picked up on. She wondered how close to disaster they’d really passed these last few days. 

The ship was slowly pulled down to the ground, revealing to Sumi why the Listless ’ gondola hung lower beneath the envelope than the other airships. Smaller ships would have been able to slot into a spot among the city’s buildings, but the Listless ’ envelope was comparatively massive. She needed the extra separation just to be able to nestle in among the buildings, or else she’d have been forced to dock outside the city. 

The ship thudded to the ground, and the crew wasted no time hopping the railing and descending below. A small crowd was already gathering atop the roof they’d landed on, pestering each and every aviator with questions about the state of the ship. The aviators answered in raucous and exaggerated shouts, but not a one of them stopped to chat. They moved together as an unstoppable mass forcing their way through the crowd, repeatedly declaring their intent to head for the nearest bar. 

Sumi couldn’t blame them. In fact, she probably wouldn’t be far behind, after she finished making a plan with Souta. He was conferring with Captain Hikosen and Hikoshi up near the wheel, his stance casual and relaxed. Sumi noticed that he’d taken his helmet all the way off, hooking it at his belt for the first time since leaving the village. She felt mildly scandalized; for Souta that was two steps away from undressed. 

She joined the small group, following Souta’s lead and pulling her helmet off to hook it at her belt. They’d managed to hammer out the dent that had kept it wedged on during the night, though Sumi was certain she’d be hearing the ringing of the hammer for the rest of her life. 

“We’ll likely stay docked here for repairs for some few days. I know the Guild will likely accommodate you, but on the off chance they’re somehow full on rooms I want you to know you’ll always have a bunk on the Listless. ”

“We appreciate that, Captain. Would it be alright if we leave our things here for a while, until we find somewhere to stay?”

Captain Hikosen gave a limp-wristed wave, as if the idea was hardly worth addressing. “Of course, of course. And if you have any shipments you might need to send that cross along our routes I’ll be sure to accommodate them. As far as the crew and I are concerned, you two are the only reason this ship is still flying. You’ve saved our home, so the least we could do is open its doors to you.”

“Appreciated. I’ll have to pen a letter to the Hunter that replaced us, to warn them of that troop of Rajang. Will you be crossing back over the village any time soon?”

Hikoshi, who Sumi noticed had taken off her leg cast, pulled a rolled-up ledger from her pocket. She scanned it for a brief moment, then slipped it away. 

“Our next shipment isn’t due there for a few months, but we’ll pass a convenient cross-current on our way out. A little detour won’t kill us.”

Captain Hikosen only nodded, accepting the plan without comment. Sumi knew Hikoshi was an experienced aviator compared to the rest, but it seemed like she’d been underselling her position in the crew. Sumi had seen her make as many of the decisions as the captain did. 

Business concluded, Captain Hikosen began to descend to the building’s roof to negotiate what would be a lengthy and costly repair process. Hikoshi hopped up to Sumi, taking her arm and leading her towards where the rest of the crew had disappeared to. Before they could start chatting Souta called out to her. 

“You going to be alright in the city on your own, Sumi?” He asked. 

She rolled her eyes at him. “You’re fine with me facing down Monsters and running through the jungle, but the idea of some city muggers gets you nervous?”

“I’m not worried about you getting robbed, I’m worried about you getting lost. And it’s not like you have any money to lose, you know.”

“If I don’t know my way back I’ll just look for the largest airship in existence. Sound like a plan?”

Souta rolled his eyes back at her, but didn’t argue further. Sumi followed Hikoshi to the stairs, descending from the roof. 

It seemed the proprietor of this building knew airship crews well, because they immediately descended into a rowdy bar. The Listless ’ crew had taken up positions in one corner of the room, shoving a few tables together to sit together. Judging by the plethora of scratch marks on the wooden floors, that was a common occurrence. Most of the crowd that had greeted the ship was orbiting somewhere nearby, listening to the crew recount the adventures that had brought the Listless to its current state.

Sumi only heard a few passing details, but she knew the tall tale was growing taller by the second. Hikoshi swiped some mugs off the table from a pair of her crewmates, the duo too busy bragging to some ridiculously dressed fop to notice. She handed a drink to Sumi and took a sip of her own while they crossed through the exit to head down another flight of stairs. 

Sumi glanced out one of the windows to the street below, where dozens of people bobbed past. One small slice of the city held more people than she’d seen in her life before now. 

They slipped out the final door to the street, HIkoshi’s left arm still wrapped around Sumi’s right. Sumi took a sip of her-- ale, she thought? -- while watching the crowd flow past. It was full of people dressed in soft clothes and flowing silks made her armor feel out of place, even more so than it had at home. At least there everyone had been dressed in practical clothing for their work, and it had only been that Sumi’s work was different from most. Here she knew that the styles she saw were actual styles , chosen because of some inscrutable social code. 

The sword at her waist and the shield on her back did seem to earn her some consideration, though. The crowd parted in deference to her armor even with Hikoshi linking arms and pulling her along at a casual pace.

At least, they did whenever they were close enough to see her. As a child she’d held the secret hope that her height wasn’t that far below average, it was just that her village was full of particularly tall people. That was one childhood dream that had been shattered. 

“What catches your eye, country girl?” Hikoshi asked, gesturing widely to the winding street.

“I don’t even know. Is it normally this busy?”

Hikoshi laughed. “It’ll get busier in a few hours, actually, when most people get off work. If it’s overwhelming now we’ll have to be sure to find somewhere and put our feet up when it really gets messy.”

“Noted: cities suck.”

“Aw, c’mon, Sumi,” Hikoshi elbowed her as they walked down the street. “It can’t be all that bad. What do you want to see?”

“Honestly, I have no idea. I was impressed enough by three story buildings. Everything else is flying above my head.”

Hikoshi hummed thoughtfully, thinking. “Well, I think I know at least one place you’d be interested in. Want to see the Guild Hall?”

“You’re going to take me on a date to… my job?” Sumi asked, eyebrows raised. 

“Hey, if you don’t want to go-”

“No, that definitely works for me. Not like I’d know enough to be impressed by anything else.”

Hikoshi pulled at her arm, turning their path down a different street. This one seemed to mostly be shops, large glass windows displaying a variety of products. Hikoshi hummed at her side, not paying the displays much mind as she mulled something over. 

“So… did you say this was a date?” Hikoshi asked. 

“You’re literally hanging off my arm.” 

Hikoshi looked down, surprise on her face, somehow. “I am, aren’t I? When’d that happen?”

Sumi chuckled. “About the time we got off the ship.”

“Oh. Well, that was definitely just for support. You know, for my leg, the wounded one? The one that definitely still hurts.”

Sumi snickered. “Then I’ll lend you my support all the way to wherever you’re leading me, m’lady.”

They continued joking as they made their way through the streets. It wasn’t quite as fascinating as the jungle, but Sumi still craned her head around to catch everything she could. Many buildings were actually four or even five stories tall, which seemed ludicrous to Sumi. She couldn’t imagine coming home after a long day’s work and having to climb five flights of stairs, but obviously some people did. 

Hikoshi explained that most of the store owners lived just above their shops, and many of their employees or family would live on the floors above. Rooms cost less the higher you were, to compensate for the daily trek. Sumi felt relieved to know that there were at least some things about living in the middle of nowhere that were better than the city. 

She was going to ask Hikoshi how far away the Guild Hall was, but the question proved unnecessary. It came into sight in short order, and it was pretty obvious which building housed the Hunter’s Guild. 

Unlike every building they’d seen so far, the Guild Hall was constructed of thick wood. The individual logs were thicker than almost any tree Sumi was familiar with, wider than her outstretched arms and straight as an arrow for thirty, forty feet, where they came to a flat roof that bristled with defensive ornaments. 

Compared to the decorative masonry that surrounded it, the Guild Hall was utterly utilitarian. It had no windows aside from sporadic slits cut in the wood, out of which ballista bolts poked to aim down the approaching streets. Bare stone surrounded it to make a bleak courtyard that stretched outward some fifty feet, keeping the area well clear of any obstruction that could have possibly blocked lines of attack. Each wall had a single set of swinging doors that were small enough that many comers and goers would have to duck to enter, but she caught a glimpse of them opening and saw that the door itself was a foot or more thick. 

The Hall had been placed exactly where the river that ran through the city split, leaving one bridge a side as an avenue to approach it. The river met again behind the Hall, which made her wonder if the island had been artificially constructed for just that purpose. On the far side of the Hall was a bustling market, packed to the gills with exotic goods that Sumi couldn’t recognize. The smell of savory meat reached her despite the distance, setting her mouth watering. It had been hours since she last ate. 

The close side of the bridge was what really caught her interest, though. It was a sprawling smithy with a half-dozen blacksmiths hammering on pieces of metal and carapace. A whirling water wheel was attached via gears to power a half-dozen implements of various purposes, a luxury Sumi could have only dreamed about with her father. 

One was a giant pillar of what looked like solid iron. It was being slowly lifted into the air by the cogs and gears, sliding upward along a guide shoot that kept it centered above an anvil larger than any Sumi had ever seen. Sumi broke into a jog in anticipation, a wild grin taking her over. She watched a dirty-smocked blacksmith center a piece of brown carapace under the iron, carefully measuring its position at all four corners. She was almost certain she knew what this was for, and she wanted a good view. 

She pulled Hikoshi and herself to a stop as the iron pole reached its zenith, breath bated. The smith stepped away from the carapace and gave a signal to an assistant at a nearby lever. 

He pulled it.

The iron hammer fell, seeming almost ponderous in its motion on account of its size. That illusion was shattered when it impacted, a thunderclap echoing through the courtyard. From twenty feet away she felt the stones rattle under her boots, mirroring a delighted shiver that ran up her spine. The things she could do with a device like that! What couldn’t the Guild make, if tools like this were common enough that passers by hardly gave it more than a glance? 

    Sumi found herself laughing as she rushed up to the closest smith, who gave her little more than an odd glance before returning to his work. 

“Excuse me! What do you call that?” Sumi asked, pointing to the massive hammer. Hikoshi still had an arm interlocked with hers, a vaguely amused expression on her face. 

He grunted, giving a look. “Called a coghammer. Pretty standard stuff, Hunter. What do you care?”

“ Standard?” Sumi clarified. “You mean that’s just normal for you guys?”

“Any proper Guild smithy will have one, unless they’re not near water. How new are you?”

“Two months and counting since I left my father’s smithy. This is my first time at a Guild Hall.”

The blacksmith’s demeanor changed as soon as she said the word ‘smith’. He dropped his hammer and wiped his brow before throwing off his gloves, bending over to extend a hand for her to shake. She gripped it, letting him pump it vigorously. “A smith’s girl, eh? You finish your apprenticeship before jumping ship?”

“My father said I’d be finished learning from him when he was dead.”

“Ha!” He bellowed, drawing looks from his coworkers. “My kind of man, sounds like. Alright then, what’s the most complicated piece you’ve ever made? That oughtta give us a good gauge of where you’re at.” 

Sumi cocked her head and thought for a moment before thumping her breastplate, gauntlets clanking against it. It was about as simple as plated armor could be made, little more than an oval barrel that protected her chest, but it was impressive nonetheless. Chainmail and a makeshift gambeson protected her abdomen, because she hadn’t been confident enough to make interlocking plates that wouldn’t hinder her reach. Her arm and leg pieces were basic cylinders, but they moved smoothly and didn’t restrict her. She was proud of her armor.

“You made the chestpiece?” The smith asked.

“I made everything I have on me besides my clothes. Armor, sword, shield, and I even tanned the hide for the belt.”

“Damn,” He muttered, leaning for a closer inspection. Sumi realized just how tall the man was when he had to put his hands on his knees to be at eye-level with her. After a moment’s observation he grunted and grabbed her by the shoulders, hauling her up into the air to hold her to the light. 

Sumi groaned while Hikoshi burst out laughing. “I really wish people would stop picking me up like this.”

He dropped her with a clank, dusting off his hands. “Sorry ‘bout that. Wanted to check the fit. Didn’t pinch you in any places or anything like that?”

“No, I’ve got it connected together properly. It holds my weight well.”

He whistled appreciatively, pulling up a box for a seat. “Hey, Hanma! Come check this out! Found me a Hunter that can do more than hit things with other things.” 

The blacksmith that had been operating the coghammer sauntered over, eyeing her up and down. 

“That so, Kayjee? What’s she got going for her?”

He gestured at Sumi from head to toe. “Made everything you can see on her. Ever heard of a Hunter that makes their own gear?”

Hanma was an old woman with gray hair that had been carelessly hacked short, the only spots of color coming from soot and burns. She crossed her impressively thick arms, inspecting Sumi with a jeweler’s eye. 

“Yeah, I’ve heard of Hunters that do it. Been a long time, though. What, your gramp’s a Hunter that’s too old school for Guild smithies?”

“Nope. Just didn’t have anyone other than my dad to make me gear, and he definitely wasn’t going to do it for me.”

“Admirable.” Hanma stated, continuing her visual inspection. Her eyes caught on Sumi’s helmet, attached to her waist. She made a give-it-to-me gesture, so Sumi did. “Hmm. Open face with a sliding visor. Simple hinge, works fine. How’d you cut the eye slits?”

“Chiseled the metal to weaken it, then hammered it out. Didn’t have a way to make it in one piece with the eye slits included.”

She grunted, spinning the helmet around. “Crude, but it worked. Your father ever made armor before?”

“No.”

“Ingenuitive then, not lazy. Good work.”

The woman tossed the helmet back to her, walking away to return to her work. 

“Woman of few words, apparently.” Hikoshi noted. The blacksmith Sumi had been chatting with, Kayjee, nodded.

“I don’t think she’s the type that hates chatting or anything like that, personally. I think she genuinely prefers working to talking.”

“Must be a productive way to live.” 

Kayjee snorted. “Don’t get to be the Master Smith for a whole city if you’re anything less. After some reshuffling a couple years ago I’m technically the second most experienced smith in town, and I know I’m never taking over that job. Way too much damn work.”

Something occurred to Sumi, prompting her to laugh. “I guess we’re the same rank, then. I was the second most experienced smith in my village, too.”

Kayjee eyed her. “...There were only two smiths in your village, weren’t there?”

Sumi hooked her helmet back on her belt, giving him only a noncommittal shrug. “C’mon, Hikoshi. Let’s go check out the Guild proper.”

They headed through the smithing yard, eyeing the variety of ongoing projects around them. Sumi recognized the piece that the coghammer and Hanma had been working on as they passed it. It was Souta’s bent amor, being repeatedly hammered back into shape. Each earthshaking blow of the coghammer only bent the Rathalos carapace by a few degrees, so it would likely be some time yet before it was finished. Hanma was repositioning it between every blow, carefully checking its angle with a complex array of linked tools that looked tiny in her calloused palms. 

They passed through the smithy, stepping up onto the stone bridge that led to the Guild Hall. Sumi acted as casual as she could as they stepped across it, but she couldn’t hide her curious glances well. The bridge was a forty foot span of carefully interlocked stone, arching up and above the current of muddy water that lazily swirled below. The only bridge she’d seen in her life had been the small wooden one in front of her house, built before she was born. She felt like this one, so impossibly heavy, couldn’t be truly floating in the air like this. The fact that it didn’t collapse underneath them was astounding.

The island that the Guild Hall sat upon was definitely artificial, Sumi decided as they approached it. It was too regular at the edges, composed of large broken stones that shielded the more easily eroded soil within. It was perfectly flat all the way across, as well, and next to no grass grew on it. Only the dominating structure of the Guild Hall rose from the landscape.

The logs that made up the Guild Hall were even more impressive when she was up close to them. The wood was weathered with age, pockmarked by so many overlapping scars that no single mark could be traced from start to end. Each trunk was wider than her outstretched arms and rose some forty five feet into the air, extending downward into the soil an indeterminable distance as well. Sumi could see no visible method of joining them, mortar or otherwise, but they interlocked into a single unit all the same. 

The defensive slits that sprouted ballista bolts were placed seemingly randomly across its surface, giving it an odd appearance. Now that she was up close she could see that the bolts were far thicker than the ones she was familiar with, points tipped with metal thicker than both her fists together. The roof of the Hall completed its shaggy appearance, bristling with defensive crenellations. From her vantage point on the ground she could see dozens of wooden spears jutting up into the air, preventing anything from landing on the building from above. 

They approached the stocky door just as it swung open, a ducked man dressed in thick leathers acknowledging them with a nod as he passed them by. Sumi caught the door before it closed, hauling it open. It was heavy, even for her. 

She passed inside with Hikoshi, who re-linked arms with her. Sumi’s impression of the inside had her imagining a utilitarian fortress, with short ceilings and cramped desks surrounded by cabinets overstuffed with paperwork. 

She’d been wrong. Rings of catwalks worked their way around the walls, leaving a central open space above a pit that descended in steps to a circular bar. Ropes crisscrossed the entire space as if hung by the world’s most easily distracted spider, slowly rotating to pull goods that had no obvious consistency. Sumi watched a bloodied pig head on a hook follow a dangling young girl who was herself followed by a crate overstuffed with books, all apparently heading to the same location. Many of the catwalks were connected to the others by nothing more than rope netting, stairs entirely forgotten in favor of an obstacle course that Hunters scrambled across with casual familiarity. 

Sumi was distracted by the feeling of Hikoshi’s arm slipping loose from hers. She turned to voice a question she already knew the answer to, but her companion was already gone. She was running towards one of the meat hooks with a wild grin on her face. 

Hikoshi hopped up onto the hook, her foot fitting into its crook easily. She wrapped an arm around the rope and began scanning her surroundings with a calculating eye. Sumi didn’t even get a chance to yell before Hikoshi leaped from that perch, snagging onto a net that connected the first floor to the first catwalk. She began scrambling up that one, already looking for her next path. Sumi let herself sigh, accepting the fact that she’d lost Hikoshi for the next half hour at the very least. 

She left her partner to it, descending the stairs to the central pit to begin her own exploration. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised at what was at the very center of a Hunter’s Guild outpost: a restaurant. A dozen chefs spun from hotplate to hotplate, their hands rarely empty as they slung plates out to various Hunters that came up to the bar. Sumi pulled up a seat, not intending to order quite yet. She was content with watching the organized chaos unfold. 

She leaned back in her chair, catching the bar with her foot to keep herself from falling. The Guild Hall was an utter mess in the most delightful way. She could spot the desks and piles of paperwork that she’d expected here and there, but they were tucked into the nooks and crannies of a vibrant home. 

If she had to guess, the city of Narrowstrait was currently protected by no more than two dozen Hunters. The Hall was swarming with people, but the vast majority sported no weapons or armor. Almost everyone wore cloaks, ponchos, or oversized hats, things practical for spending time in the wild, but only a handful had a Hunter’s appearance. She spotted one man sauntering past her with a hammer on his back larger than the upper half of his own body, made from the jagged skull of some creature she couldn’t identify. Another had a sword so large that its tip threatened to scrape the floor while its handle extended a foot above his head, made of so many different body parts that it seemed a collage of their Hunting record. 

It also seemed like she was the only one with armor made of metal, she noted. Everyone else had fashioned something from the wilds into their clothes, protecting them far better than simple steel ever could. She made a mental note to get her Apceros pieces attached to her armor the second she and Hikoshi headed back to the ship. She may be new to Hunting, but she didn’t want that to be obvious from fifty paces. 

One of the chefs managed to detach himself from the flurry behind the bar, sliding up to her stool with a sweaty smile. He leaned on the counter, using the moment to give his feet a break. 

“What’re you having, Shiny?”

Sumi groaned. “Shiny? Does that mean what I think it means?” 

He laughed, wiping sweat from his brow. “If you don’t even know what it means, then it definitely applies. Now, what’s your order?”

“Don’t know, never been here before. What have you got?”

He tsked, wagging a finger at her. “Not how we do things, Hunter. You’re not ordering a meal, you’re prepping for battle. What are you going after? Something venomous, flying, fiery? I’ll get you the meal to fit.”

“I just got into town a few hours ago, and you’re the first person from the Guild I’ve talked to. I don’t have any Hunts lined up.”

The chef’s expression dropped, his interest in her gone. “Well, no Hunt, no food.” He turned to leave.

“Hold on!” Sumi hollered. He spun on a heel, eyeing her. “I’m still hungry, you know. Can’t I get something anyway?”

He sniffed disdainfully. “I can get you an appetizer. That’s it.”

He dove back into the fray, slipping between his fellow chefs until she lost sight of him. Sumi sighed, tapping her fingers rhythmically on the counter while she observed her surroundings. She spotted Hikoshi, about thirty feet above her, dangling upside down by her legs alone. She was chatting excitedly to the little girl Sumi had seen earlier, who was herself swinging from the banister of the catwalk like it was a trapeze. Their expressions were as nonchalant as an elderly pair discussing the weather.

The chef returned a moment later, sliding a plate and mug towards her without comment. He disappeared back into the fray before Sumi could thank him. 

‘Appetizer’ was quite the understatement for the meal that the chef brought her. At least, it would have been for most people. The plate was larger than her head, heaped with meat and plants diced into thick slabs. She could identify four or five different types of meat and at least six different plants spread across a bed of white rice. She grabbed a pair of chopsticks and dug in eagerly, glad that she’d at last found somewhere that understood a Hunter’s appetite. 

The appetizer was gone in minutes and, true to its title, only dented her hunger. She stood with a pleased sigh, still grateful for the free meal. 

She heard a thump behind her, something landing from the sky above. She twisted around to find Hikoshi behind her, swept into an acrobat’s bow. Sumi didn’t want to know where she’d leapt from. 

“Enjoying the Guild Hall?” Sumi asked. 

“More than I’d expected! I actually stumbled , Sumi. Twice! Do you know how long it’s been since I had to think about what I was doing while I was climbing?”

“A comfortably long, very safe amount of time?”

“A very boring amount of time, let me tell you. I’ll have to try and convince the Captain to install some hooks like these just to spice things up a bit.”

Sumi snorted, approaching her companion. She felt awkward leaving her dirty plate behind, but it was swept away in seconds to be cleaned. She offered her arm to Hikoshi, heading for the exit. 

“Probably time for us to be heading back, isn’t it?”

“You know, Sumi, people don’t have to be indoors by dark in the city. They’ve got these big tall walls, remember? You may have noticed them on the way in.”

She elbowed Hikoshi. “I know that. But I also know Souta’s the paranoid type, and besides, I want to work on my armor. I need to be ready since we don’t know when we’ll be heading out.”

“Jeez, girl. You planning to end up like Hanma, working till you drop?”

Sumi looked at her, trying to judge if Hikoshi actually wanted to stay out in the city. She was looking ahead, but her expression was teasing. Just joking, then. “And here I recall you saying you liked spending most of your life off the ground. I was expecting you to be landsick by now.”

“A little bit of variety is good for the soul, I’ve heard. I don’t think spending a few days slumming with you dirt-lovers will ruin me.” 

Sumi threw her shoulder into the Guild’s door, forcing it open with a grunt. “Then I’m glad you’ve lowered yourself to my level for just a little bit.”

Hikoshi tossed her hair pompously, taking a high-minded tone to her voice as they stepped outside. “It’s important to spend time among the lesser folk, lest you forget the value of your blessings.”

The sun was beneath the city’s walls, coating the streets in shadow. Hikoshi hadn’t been lying when she said that the streets would be busier, Sumi realized. The roads that surrounded the Guild Hall’s island were packed with rushing hordes, packed so thick that their colored clothes resembled a multicolored carpet. 

They walked back over the bridge, which most everyone avoided using. Sumi supposed there must be a rule about using the Guild’s island as a shortcut, because the few people they did pass gave them furtive and guilty glances, as if she were going to order their arrest any second. 

She idly wondered about that as she and Hikoshi headed back to the Listless . She’d never asked Souta much about how Hunters operated outside the frontier. How much authority did she really have, as a Hunter? The Guild was important, she knew, critical to the operation of any settlement be they big or small, but the cities were still technically ruled by city councils and nobility. She’d have to ask Souta about it at some point.

For now, though, she was content with the wide berth the crowds gave her as they headed back to the Listless , allowing her to enjoy Hikoshi’s chatter as the sun set behind them. 

Chapter Text

Sumi woke with the sun the next morning, her body finally returning to its regular schedule. She was laying in one of the Listless’ hammocks, which felt odd when the ship’s gentle bobbing wasn’t rocking her to sleep.

The Guild’s lodgings had been full, as the captain had expected. They’d offered to put Sumi and Souta up in an inn for the time being, but spending Guild money on something they could have gotten for free was distasteful. Besides, she quite liked staying on the World’s Largest Airship. If nothing else, it was a great story for later in her life. 

She rolled out of the hammock, dropping to the floor with a thud. Most of the aviators around her were still sleeping like the dead, trying to bypass their hangovers entirely by entering voluntary comas. Sumi had only started drinking recently, but the agonized moans she heard from the few unwillingly awake were encouraging her to avoid getting drunk any time soon. 

She grabbed her bag from beneath the hammock, trying to avoid any loud clanking from the armor within. It was inconvenient to take it off every evening and put it on the next day, but she still adamantly refused to sleep in it when she wasn’t in the field. She had to let herself have some simple comforts.

She walked up onto the deck, looking out at the city bathed in the morning light. The sun was just peeking over the horizon, only visible on account of her height above the city. The walls kept the buildings and empty streets in shadow, few people if any out walking at this hour. She stretched, preparing for her morning exercise. 

Hikoshi was sleeping in the center of the deck with only a pillow. She hadn’t been kidding when she said she preferred sleeping up top rather than below. 

Sumi finished equipping her armor, double checking the various straps and ratchets that kept it secure. With her sword tied to her wrist and shield strapped to her forearm, she descended the side of the ship to begin her morning routine. 

Souta was already below, working himself through his push-ups. She offered him a simple nod in greeting before beginning. 

She was nearing her last set an hour later when she noticed Hikoshi leaning against the railing, watching them work out. Sumi gave her a wave, which was returned lazily. It didn’t seem like Hikoshi normally got up at this hour. Hopefully they hadn’t woken her. 

They finished as the sun finally began lighting the streets below, the first citizens of Narrowstrait beginning to trickle out for their morning business. Seeing that they were finished, Hikoshi flipped over the rail, descending below. 

“Hey, guys,” She greeted as she hopped onto the dock’s roof. “Got any plans for the day?”

Sumi looked to Souta. He gave a noncommittal gesture. “Not really. Going to go report to the Guild properly, get our paperwork in order. Since we’re back earlier than expected I don’t expect them to have an assignment for us right off the bat.”

Hikoshi looked at Sumi hopefully. “Does that mean we can try to talk to them about your idea?”

“Idea?” Souta asked.

“Yeah, we were talking about it the other day,” Sumi explained. “Hikoshi wanted a job on a Guild ship, and I told her we could put in a good word for her. Apparently it’s damn hard to get in the door, since so many aviators want the job.” 

“I don’t see why not. I’ve never really looked into that side of things, but I’m sure we could ask around and find out where they deal with airship logistics. Narrowstrait’s a pretty big port, right?”

“A massive one. There’s only a few cities with such a busy ocean port that have such convenient cross currents above them.”

“Then the Guild will probably have someone here that deals with that stuff. We’re about to head out for breakfast, want to come with? We’ll head to the Guild Hall afterwards.”

Hikoshi beamed, obviously relieved that Souta didn’t have any objections. Sumi knew he wouldn’t, of course.

They went to a nearby inn for breakfast, stealing a table in the dining hall. The meal was, by Sumi’s standard, exorbitantly expensive, but Souta paid for it without a second glance. It seemed the inn’s staff were familiar with Hunters, because they brought out two huge plates stuffed high with food for Sumi and Souta, and a single comparatively modest plate for Hikoshi. 

They finished their meal in short order, leaving a few extra coins behind as an apology for stealing a spot from the inn’s patrons. Hikoshi led them back to the Guild Hall while the streets slowly grew busier around them. 

The smithy outside the Guild Hall was already bustling with work by the time they arrived, and Sumi exchanged friendly waves with Kayjee. Hanma only tilted her head to Sumi as she walked past, not looking away from her work for a single second. Sumi would bet that was far more of an acknowledgement than most people got. 

Her second time in the Guild Hall wasn’t quite as overwhelming, but it was an impressive sight nonetheless. She followed Souta up a series of stairs and net ladders to a cubby on the third catwalk, a single desk surrounded by mountains of paper and filing cabinets. A little old man was sitting in a chair, feathered quill in hand as he worked his way down a paper with precise checkmarks. He didn’t raise his head to acknowledge them, only flicked a finger in their general direction. 

“Purpose?” His nasally voice intoned. 

“Hunter Souta and Apprentice Hunter Sumi presenting for report and reassignment, sir.” Sumi blinked, slowly straightening her stance. She had never heard Souta refer to someone as ‘sir’ before. She didn’t know he even knew the word. 

The old man shuffled through one of the many stacks on his desk, narrowing his eyes as he found what he was looking for. “Reason for early presentation?”

“Conflict between invasive Tigrex and local nesting Rath pair, exacerbated by the subsequent appearance of a Rajang troop. Damage to the airship delivering my relief Hunter prompted us to escort it to Narrowstrait.” 

At the word ‘invasive’ the old man finally looked up from his papers, leathery brow crinkling as he appraised Souta. “Elaborate on the conditions surrounding the invasive Tigrex.”

“It’s all in our report, sir-” Souta began, proffering a sheaf of papers, but the old man cut him off. 

“I do not care. Elaborate.”

Souta simply returned the papers to his belt, nodding with military precision. Sumi did her best not to gape. Who was this old man? 

“Six days ago the Tigrex appeared at the edge of the village’s territory, pursuing a group of survivors from the crash of the airship Listless , who entered the village’s shelter. The Tigrex assaulted the shelter for the next several hours, and presented with a generally malnourished appearance alongside evidence of recent severe wounds delivered by wyvern talons. Our follow-up investigation found the remains of a wyvern nest and the corpse of a Rathalos. The nest was known to us from prior expeditions. We concluded that the Rathian had attacked the airship, prompting its evacuation, having chosen it as a replacement nest site to nurse the wounds of it and its one remaining young. In an effort to recover the ship and draw away the Tigrex from attacking the village’s shelter, Hunter Sumi devised a plan to lure the Rathian into conflict with the Tigrex. This plan worked, and the Rathian dispatched the Tigrex before retreating.”

The old man’s eyes flicked to Sumi for the briefest of seconds. “Good work.” He looked back to Souta. “And the Rajang troop?”

“A single young assaulted us in the night during the recovery efforts of the Listless . It was fended off, but fearing further attacks we set sail to Narrowstrait, trusting the defense of the village to our replacement Hunter.”

The old man folded his hands beneath his chin, considering. After a few moments, he gestured to an empty spot on his desk. Souta dropped his papers there, then glanced meaningfully at Sumi. She started, jumping forward to dump her own report on top of his. The old man sighed, leaning back in his chair.

“This is the seventh report of ecological disruption as a result of invasive species within the last eight weeks. With your report of a Tigrex, the known habitats of the involved species overlap in only a few select locations. As you are unassigned at the moment and unneeded elsewhere, I would like to have you two begin an investigation. You will be afforded a scouting ship as soon as a suitable pilot is found. Do you accept these terms?”

“I do, sir.” Souta answered immediately. He turned to Sumi, excitement clear despite his restrained expression. It was an excellent posting, but when Sumi didn’t respond immediately, concern clouded his face.

“Sir, if I may make a suggestion?” Sumi asked. The old man’s eyes flicked to her. This was the first time she’d spoken up. 

“You may.”

“I believe I have an aviator ready to serve as our pilot, and would like to put her forth for consideration.”

“There are hundreds of applicants in the queue to be evaluated. Your recommendation may be noted on their application, but they will not skip the process.” 

Sumi’s breath hitched in her throat for a moment before she cleared it. She chose her next words carefully. “Then I will amend my words. This pilot is a necessary condition for my acceptance of the task at hand. No other aviator will be as qualified, and I doubt her application would be reached before a lesser candidate is mistakenly accepted.”

The old man’s eyes fell into slits, evaluating her. She swallowed nervously, but held her ground. Finally, he grunted. “You grow accustomed to the bureaucracy too quickly, Hunter Sumi. I doubt I will enjoy working with you in the future. What are this pilot’s qualifications?” 

Sumi took a risk, trusting that Hikoshi hadn’t wandered off to explore the Guild again. She simply held up a hand to her right, as if offering up an example on a silver platter. To her great relief, Hikoshi stepped around the corner of the cubby right on cue. She took a few steps closer to the desk and then bowed formally to the bureaucrat. 

“Aviator-Sailor Hikoshi, sir. My qualifications are the following,” Hikoshi took a deep breath as she straightened and slipped her hands into her pockets, causing Sumi to wince. It was clear this old man preferred protocol above all else, and Hikoshi had yet to demonstrate a formal bone in her body. “I was born and raised on an airship to a pair of aviator parents, and have done regular duties from the age of three. I’ve spent the last fourteen years of my life working every day as an aviator, except for days that we spent in port. On two separate ships I’ve been effectively treated as a second-in-command to the captain, and would have the title to prove it if they’d been less afraid to admit a child was more competent than them.”

“I’ve spent time serving on courier ships, patrol ships, cargo ships, and other ships of less than ideal reputation. I’ve made a hobby of cartography, studying the works of Allicent-Von-Geary, and have a full suite of charting tools that I’m familiar in the use of. I’ve repaired gas bags, envelopes, hulls, and performed rope duties in ship-to-ship docking events. I also once, on account of a drunken captain, led the defense of the ship against a wyvern.” Hikoshi heaved out a breath, the first since she’d started speaking. Finally, she straightened once more and locked eyes with the old man. “I’d ask you if there’s anything else you’d like to know, but I already know that no one in that stack of yours compares to me. Do you have the specifications of the ship on hand and our budget, so I can begin preparing a list of supplies?”

The old man raised a single eyebrow. Sumi’s heart was thundering out of her chest, but he remained silent. He twisted in his chair and grabbed a stack of papers behind him, thumbing through them slowly and methodically. They were the aviator’s applications that he’d mentioned, Sumi could only assume. After a few eternal minutes of waiting while the old man sampled the applications, he set the stack down and addressed Hikoshi. 

“You are crewed with the Listless presently?” He asked. Hikoshi nodded. “I am under the impression that crews of airships consider one another family, not coworkers. Why have you served on so many different ships?”

“I was attempting to build a resume for this job, sir. Commanding a Guild scouting ship, that is.”

“Hmm. And your efforts in that regard included ships of ‘less than ideal reputation’, it would seem?”

“Pirates are a threat at all times, sir, and no target is more tempting than an isolated and lightly armed Guild ship. Familiarity with their operations are essential.”

He nodded, accepting the answer. He reached a withered hand to the upper left of his desk, grabbing two small sheets of paper there. These, unlike the rest, had been hand-written, not printed. He handed the papers to Hikoshi. 

“These are the specifications for the ship. If your current crew corroborates your qualifications you will be brought to it tomorrow. Prepare your list of supplies tonight, unless you were lying, in which case you will need to evacuate the city to avoid arrest for fraud. A letter or officer of the guard will find you in the morning.”

Hikoshi didn’t respond, already looking over the specifications in her hands. She flipped a page, finding a drawing of the airship. Her expression clouded, confused. 

“Sir? May I ask what this device at the rear of the hull is?” 

“A propeller, I believe it is called.” 

“Is there anyone I can speak to to familiarize myself with this… thing? I’ve never seen one before.”

For the very first time in the conversation, the old man smiled. “No, there is not. Its creator is several hundred miles away, and it is the first of its kind. I recommend you handle those sheets of instructions with care, as there are no copies. Per her file, Hunter Sumi has experience as a blacksmith. I expect you two will have to work closely together to monitor its usage.” Hikoshi swallowed, distractedly agreeing as she read over the two pages that were about to dictate the next few months of her life. “You are dismissed.”

The three of them backpedaled out of the small nook, hearts thundering. Sumi had never imagined that there was a human being that could intimidate her as much as a Monster, but she’d just survived her first encounter with one. Hikoshi was absorbed in her papers, but her hands were shaking, and even Souta was tugging at the collar of his armor. 

When they were far enough away, Sumi leaned in to hiss at Souta. “Who was that, Souta?” 

“Guildmaster Harrow, the man in charge of every Hunter in a hundred mile radius. The only reason he’s behind a desk is because a Nargacuga took both his legs off a couple years ago, just before I became Hunter.”

“I thought he was just short!” Hikoshi whispered, looking up from her papers with wide eyes.

“I mean, he was short then, too, I’ve heard. Before the whole leg thing.”

Hikoshi ribbed Sumi. “Well, good news for you, isn’t it? Height doesn’t keep you from promotions in the Guild.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Sumi whispered back. They were probably well past the Guildmaster’s range of hearing, but the encounter had left her paranoid. “Now I just have to make sure I keep my legs attached.”

They descended the Guild Hall’s maze of stairs and ladders in a giddy haze, excitedly going over the meeting. When they finally exited the Hall into the open air, Sumi let out a bubbling giggle. 

“I can’t believe you told him you worked on, on-- what did you call it?”

Hikoshi tossed her hair haughtily, adopting a noble tone. “‘Ships of less than ideal reputation’, darling.”

Souta and Sumi both laughed hard enough to wheeze. Souta slapped her on the back approvingly. “Did you really work for pirates, girl? I can’t imagine you being a swashbuckling fourteen year old!”

“I was fifteen, I’ll have you know, and it wasn’t like the stories, alright? Airship on airship combat basically never happens outside bar bragging. It was smuggling, night flying to avoid inspections, that kind of thing. Never shot at anyone else, I promise.” 

“Aw, c’mon!” Souta whined. “Don’t crush my hopes like that! Tell me about the time you swung between ships with a knife in your teeth, telling them to surrender or die!” 

“Sorry, buddy, I think the only time I’ve heard that line is in betting games.”

Souta threw his hands up in mock disgust. “Ugh! Just ruin my dreams, why don’t you? I wanted to know someone out there had been robbed by a prepubescent little girl, voice cracking the entire time she was throwing threats around. That would’ve been amazing!”

They continued to joke as they meandered back to the Listless , struggling to believe their luck. Sumi’s first proper assignment as a Hunter was a massive one, something normally given to a squad of experienced Hunters. The fact that they were the only ones available to take it on probably didn’t bode well for how out of whack the environment was, but she could worry about that once it became a problem. 

For now she was imagining sailing over distant mountain ranges and foreign lands, half of the sights she spotted the first time anyone alive had seen them. It had been three months since Sumi thought that she’d seen every sight she was ever going to see for the rest of her life. 

Chapter Text

Hikoshi turned the two papers in her hand over and over again, looking at it from multiple angles as if some hidden meaning would present itself. She had no luck, of course. The diagrams explained how to take care of the propello, and the engine that powered it, but nothing about why. It was a maintenance manual that contained all the justifications of a religious text: all instruction, no reasoning. 

If it wasn’t for the complication added by the engine she would have been done with her supply list hours ago. The rationale for it was fairly simple, something she’d helped prepare a hundred times, even if this was to be her first scouting mission. She was traveling with two Hunters, so she’d gone light on rations in favor of a sturdier stock of medical supplies, and because she was apparently expected to be mapping their course she’d allotted herself a desk and several tall stacks of paper. The rest of her supply requests were routine, if a little bit on the cautious side. The only wrench in her plans came from a single line at the bottom of her instructions. 

Coal? Hundreds of pounds of it? Nearly half of their allotted cargo weight had been earmarked for the black fuel, and it wasn’t like she couldn’t have thought of a different use for the space. She’d known that steam engines were fueled by the stuff, but she’d never encountered one herself. The only thing she’d heard the noisy contraptions being used for was printing presses and mining pumps. Maybe something with mills as well, if she really searched her memory for it, but an airship? It seemed ludicrous. 

But if the capabilities outlined on the second page weren’t exaggerated, she could see how it would be worth it. Being untethered from the wind by any degree, no matter how slight, would be revolutionary. It would completely change the prospective location of future colonies, trade routes, and the importance of airships as a whole. The specifications of this design wouldn’t let her ignore currents entirely, but it would still make navigation far easier than it had ever been. It was almost enough to make her glad to have the untested and unfamiliar machine aboard. 

Almost. 

Sumi had split off with Souta for the rest of the day, going to talk to the various Hunters around town who had experienced the same kind of attacks that they were set to investigate. That left Hikoshi free for the day to tear her hair out on her own, and she was fairly certain she was going to be bald before nightfall. Hopefully Sumi wouldn’t mind. 

Eventually even the repair work on the Listless wasn’t enough to drown out her pacing and constant irritated grumbles, and she got the impression from the rest of the crew that it would be best for her to find somewhere else to stress. She descended the ship with the notes carefully rolled up into her pocket, deciding to wander the streets until a better idea occurred to her. 

It wasn’t like the engine was going to make or break the mission, she supposed. The scout ship was similar enough in dimension and specification to what she’d expected to pilot, only with far less room to make use of. If worse came to worst she could just shove the entire lot off the side and fly it the old-fashioned way, expensive prototype be damned. When they complained to her she could tell them that if they’d wanted it back they should have sent an engineer. 

That thought calmed her, at least. It wasn’t like the quest depended entirely on her understanding of the engine. It just depended entirely on her ability to pilot the ship through uncharted lands, which was at the very least the impossible challenge she’d been expecting originally. 

Her mental meanderings were interrupted by her physical meandering leading her past a book shop. The signs in the window promised low prices and excellent print quality, which gave her an idea. She dipped into the store, the door ringing a bell above her head. A clerk looked up from the book he’d been reading in mild surprise, quickly swiping it under the desk while plastering a practiced smile onto his face. 

“Hello! Welcome to Juyodendai Bookstore, ma’am. Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“Sort of, I guess. Are you the owner?”

“No ma’am, just the son of the owner, but I can answer any questions all the same. What are you looking for?”

Hikoshi glanced around the cramped shop, where shelves had been stuffed into every available space. “I was actually wondering how your books were made. I’ve heard some places have started to use steam-powered printing presses?”

His otherwise implacable smile faltered somewhat. This wasn’t in his usual repertoire of customer service questions and answers. “Um, well, yes, most shops these days are, I believe. They’re much cheaper, allowing us to sell at the affordable prices that surely beckoned you into our establishment. Why do you ask?”

Hikoshi opened her mouth to answer, then paused. Was the scouting ship she was being given charge of supposed to be secret? It was a brand new prototype, per the instructions, and had been built at no small expense. She decided that since old Grouchy hadn’t told her to keep it under wraps she didn’t really give a shit, and pulled the papers out of her pocket. 

“I’m supposed to be piloting a ship that carries a steam engine, and I’ve got no damn idea what to do with the thing. These two pieces of paper are all I have to go off of, so I was hoping to find someone in Narrowstrait that knew more about it than I did.” 

The first genuine expression she’d seen from the clerk revealed itself as his customer-facing smile slipped away, replaced by a scrutinous curiosity. Hikoshi held up the papers for him to see, but didn’t set them on the table. She was told to be careful with them, and that had been one piece of advice she wholeheartedly agreed with. 

The clerk, though he couldn’t have been more than thirty, unfolded a pair of spectacles from a drawer beneath his desk. He leaned close to the papers, mouth moving as he scanned the labels and descriptions of the designs. 

“My word…” He muttered, entranced. “You certainly have your work cut out for you, don’t you?”

“Glad someone else sees the problem. We’re set to leave tomorrow, so do you know where I can go for some advice?”

He blinked as if clearing away mental cobwebs, straightening once more. He started to answer her before a thought appeared to occur to him, and he came out from behind the counter. Hikoshi didn’t like the mercantile glean in his eye. 

“Well, yes, certainly, but may I make my own recommendation?” He plucked a book from a shelf, holding it out to her. “‘ Fate of Steam ’ by Joki Akanishin. A speculative guide to upcoming uses of steam power, presented in a narrative format by one of the most well-informed authors among those presently alive.”

Hikoshi eyed the book. It was of average size, average length, and had a simple title font printed on the common brown cover. She was almost certain that she’d seen more unexceptional books before, but they’d naturally never stuck in her mind to be remembered. 

“No thank you,” Hikoshi declined. “I was just hoping for directions to the printing press you purchase from.”

“Ah, such a shame,” The clerk mourned, placing the book back on the shelf. He turned towards her, meeting her eyes. Silently. 

“Oh, come on.” Hikoshi put her hands on her hips. The clerk’s implacable smile returned. “You’re really going to do this?” She asked him. He twitched his head in the slightest nod of confirmation possible. She sighed. “How much is it?”

“For you, ma’am, only fifteen pieces.”

“I’ve bribed captains for less than that.”

“Must have been some awfully destitute captains, ma’am.”

Hikoshi suppressed her snort. She didn’t want to respect the man’s snark. “Alright, fine. But if I go there and don’t find anything I’m coming back to have my Hunter girlfriend shove this book down your throat.”

“I assure you, ma’am, that I wouldn’t lie to a faithful customer.” He accepted her change, handing her the book in turn. “And for what it’s worth, by the way, I really do believe the book could be of some help to you. At the very least, I found it entertaining.”

“I’m really not expecting to be bored on this trip, but I’ll keep it in mind. Maybe it won’t end up in a fireplace this evening.”

His face twitched at the mention of burning the book, but his professional demeanor won over. He gave her directions to the printing press his family bought most of their books from, even giving her his family’s name to hopefully get her through the front door. 

Hikoshi walked through the streets with the book disdainfully tucked into her waistband, trying not to think about the fact that she’d referred to Sumi as her girlfriend. Sure, it had been to make a threat more effective, but the word held too much weight for her to be comfortable with after only three sort-of-dates. She decided the most prudent course was to not mention it to anyone ever again, and try her best to forget about it herself. 

The printing press wasn’t far, but it wasn’t recognizable, either. She nearly walked past it twice before she finally spotted the small sign hung above a plain door, labeled only ‘Printer Warehouse’. The only exceptional thing about it was the fact that there was a sizable gap between the entrance to the printing shop and the next closest doors on either side, implying a large interior space. All the shades were drawn in the bottom floor windows, so she couldn’t peek in. 

She walked up to the door and knocked loudly, taking a step back when she noted the hinges placed on the outside of the door. Sure enough, the door swung outward a moment later, violently enough that it would have knocked her off the steps. A woman, dressed in clothes too fine to be as ink-stained as they were, leaned out, squinting through the sunlight. 

“Canni help ya?” She asked, blinking at Sumi. 

“Adamat family sent me your way on account of some questions I had. Mind if I come in off the street?”

The woman blinked further, then shrugged a shoulder and retreated back into the darker interior. She left the door open, which Hikoshi took as an invitation to enter. 

It took her a moment for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, the only light in the room coming from the glass roof above. It would have been brighter if the glass hadn’t been caked in smoke stains. 

She’d expected a reception room, somewhere for deals to be discussed and hammered out, and she supposed she found it after a fashion. It consisted of a single desk, though, with a chair in front and behind, and the open warehouse floor spreading out in every direction otherwise. The hiss and clank of machinery wasn’t deafening, but the pounding and erratic nature of it was distracting in the extreme. She could see three printing presses on the shop floor, each operated by a team of six or seven sweaty employees. Piles and piles of blank paper occupied most of the far wall of the warehouse, mirrored by the piles of unbound but printed paper that took up the closer side. Rather ominously, considering the flammability of the building’s contents, was the soot that soaked the stone walls. She noticed that the gloom was also present on account of the total lack of torches or lamps, and wondered how recently that particular quirk of the building had been introduced. Some lessons were learned the hard way, she supposed. 

The woman sat down behind the desk, gesturing for Hikoshi to sit across from her. She did so, pulling the rolled-up papers from her pocket so they wouldn’t be bent as she sat. 

“So,” the woman began. “Adamats gottem a new hire, sent you to iron out a deal?”

“Absolutely not. I don’t know anything about Adamat senior, but you’d have to bring a knife to my throat to lock me up in a shop with the junior. And besides, a stuffy room like that all day, every day?” Hikoshi shuddered. “No thank you. What I’m here for is some last-minute advice.” 

“Advice ain’t something we sell. Prints are a hundredth piece a page for standard settings, anything else is more. Minimum five hundred piece price for any run, on account of the setup time involved, and that’s not negotiable.”

“Then I’m way too broke for this industry, sorry to say.” The woman started to get up from the table, heading back to the printing presses. Hikoshi held up a hand, freezing her. “Wait, hold on. I’ve just got a few questions, alright?”

“Every minute of daylight we ain’t printing is money we ain’t making, girlie. Don’t do small talk here.”

“Clearly,” Hikoshi muttered under her breath, before clearing her throat and speaking up. “I can make it worth your time. You print newspapers, yeah? I’ve got you a story you can charge them for, and I’m the only one that has it.”

The woman ground her teeth, looking back at the presses. By Hikoshi’s estimation the crews didn’t look like they were in desperate need of an extra set of hands, and it seemed the woman agreed. She reluctantly sat back down and extended a hand.

“Name’s Sagi Adamat. Yours?”

Hikoshi shook the offered hand, barely conscious of the ink stains that transferred to her palm. Airship work was dirty. “Hikoshi. And you’re an Adamat?”

Sagi harrumphed. “Yep. Family business from the print to the shop. Though I’ll be honest, half the reason we’re still talking is because you trash talked my brother.”

Hikoshi smirked. “Glad I never had any siblings. Never seems to go well.”

Sagi acknowledged her comment with a dry exhale, then leaned forward. “So. Marketable story?”

Hikoshi unraveled the papers, setting them on the table. Sagi reached for them, but Hikoshi immediately pulled them back, which stilled her hands. 

“Tomorrow I’m going to be a pilot on a Guild airship, the first one in the world sporting a steam engine aboard. We’re investigating some kind of mess that’s been brewing, something about Monsters coming in from parts they shouldn’t be. Problem is, I’ve never seen a steam engine in my life, and I’m about to be the sole person responsible for a very expensive one for the next few months. Everything you can tell me about keeping one maintained, I need to know.”

Sagi leaned back in her chair as Hikoshi talked, gazing into the middle distance. “Alright. That’s a story, I’ll give ya that. But everything I know is more than you’ve got time to listen to, and more time than I’m willing to spend on it. Convince me your story’s worth it.”

Hikoshi made a face. “How would I know? I’m not a reporter. I’ve hardly even read the papers. You’re the expert.”

“You’re not good at negotiating, neither.”

“I just want to not blow myself up, alright? Looking at your place here,” Hikoshi waved to the ashen walls and windows. “That seems to be a legitimate concern. Airship crews never lift off without a plan to get back down, and I don’t intend to break that tradition tomorrow. Find out how much the story’s worth and give me some pointers.” 

Sagi grumbled something under her breath that sounded awfully close to ‘ damn morals ’ and stood up from her chair, heading for the door. Hikoshi got up to follow her, but Sagi gestured for her to stay put. 

“Just going to grab someone. I’ll be back in five. Keep yourself entertained from that chair and nowhere else or you won’t get a word from me.”

Hikoshi settled back down as Sagi stepped out of the door. As the door shut behind her she caught a brief glance of the woman breaking into a sudden sprint, ink-stained dress trailing out behind her. 

She really does hate wasting time, doesn’t she?

Hikoshi waited less-than patiently, bouncing her knee against the bottom of the desk as she watched the printers work. Sheets of paper were placed by one employee while another operated a lever, pulling it down when the paper was in place. A plate of letters was pressed into the paper, leaving an impression of a full page of text in an instant. Releasing the lever let the plate raise back up, where the mechanism automatically dipped itself into ink to refresh the marks for the next paper. 

Only one of the three presses, the one farthest from her, was fully automated. That one seemed newer, with a great number of whirling parts that she couldn’t identify the full purposes of. It grabbed paper from a hopper, printed onto it, and slipped it away without a single touch from an employee. All the workers had to do were take away the freshly printed pages and ensure the mechanism didn’t run out of blanks. Ironically, she noted, the increased speed of the machine meant that the same number of employees were required to operate it, if only to keep up with the constant demands of paper. 

Sagi returned, throwing open the door and ushering a contradictorily unassuming man inside. His presence and demeanor were completely unremarkable, but he came in wearing a particularly ornate assortment of the silks that were in fashion in Narrowstrait, brightly colored and garish. He would have been taller than Sagi and Hikoshi by a decent measure if he didn’t stoop so low, obviously uncomfortable with the filthy environment. He crinkled his nose as he lifted the hem of his dress that would have touched the floor, keeping it well clear of the offending dirt. 

“This is her,” Sagi told him. “Girlie, tell him what you told me and nothing else.”

Hikoshi frowned, but repeated her words for him verbatim. At the mention of invasive Monsters his eyes widened. He dropped his dress to the floor, slipping a board stacked with pieces of paper from beneath his robes. He slipped on a single thin black glove, then pulled a stick of writing charcoal from a protected package and leaned closer to her. 

“How many invasive Monster incidents are you familiar with? I know of five, but have heard a number of unconfirmed rumors. Are you with the Guild? Do you have access to their official records? And this steam engine, it is a novel one, yes? Never before seen? What purpose does it serve on the ship? A mobile printing press, perhaps, to disseminate information more readily to far flung colonies? Or--”

Sagi reached out, threatening to put an inky hand on his shoulder. That was enough to get him recoiling from the touch, interrupting his torrent of questions. 

“That’s enough, Tantei. I know the story is worth something now.” 

“Worth something? This girl could save me a month’s work in ten minutes! You must let me speak to her.”

“She’s on a tight timetable. How much is a half-hour interview worth?”

“A half hour?” The man, apparently called Tantei, looked like a kicked puppy. Sagi didn’t budge. He sighed. “I can assure you at least the relevant runs will be paid at half again the usual rate, Sagi. If I could have more time, it would be-”

Hikoshi cut him off. She didn’t mean to be rude, but the timid man was just… supremely interruptible. “If you’re gonna take up an hour of my time then you don’t get anything. Tight schedule, remember? Half hour or nothing.” 

“I understand, but-”

“Half again the usual rate?” Sagi butted in. He didn’t even blink at the third interruption, long since used to the treatment. “You’re not in charge of anything, Tantei. How can you guarantee me a hundred and fifty percent?”

He huffed, tapping his papers rapidly. “Ms. Adamat, you brought me in specifically because I’m poor at hiding my excitement and thus make an ideal candidate to negotiate prices with. I don’t intend to beat around the bush in this matter, something your associate here will surely appreciate considering her impatience, so I decided to simply cut the faff from the conversation and offer you the maximum amount I’m confident I can extract from my employers. Any more and you risk them backing out on the deal after I’ve received my information, which would be pointless for you and lose me a future source of information. Now, if I may move on to the questioning?”

Hikoshi whistled low. His stooped posture hadn’t straightened in the slightest, but the man was clearly confident in some regards. Sagi laughed, offering him her chair. He took it, smoothing his papers on the desk, then looked up at Hikoshi. 

“Thirty minutes, Tantei.”

“I understand. Now, Ms. Hikoshi? Begin with your account of events, summarized as neatly as possible, if you please. I will ask questions from there.”

Hikoshi did just that, briefly covering the attack on the Listless and subsequent flight from the Tigrex, followed by what she’d overheard in the Guild offices while waiting for Sumi and Souta. She also laid out the diagrams and instructions for the yet-unnamed scout ship, once again wondering if she was supposed to be keeping them under wraps. She’d find out when she got back from the trip, at the very least. 

Tantei took notes erratically, at seemingly random moments, without ever looking away from Hikoshi. She noticed that his sentences were curving erratically across the page, occasionally overlapping, but his focus never wavered. Her account of things took only a few minutes to complete, after which he placed his palms flat on the desk and began to ask his questions. 

“You say this is the seventh invasive incident known to the Guild in the last two months?”

“According to Guildmaster Harrow, yes.”

“And the investigation is to be headed by a rookie Hunter and low rank Hunter, with only you as their guide?”

“I don’t know if Souta’s a ‘low rank’ or whatever,” Hikoshi clarified. “I just know that Sumi will occasionally give him shit for still being a newbie. Might just be jokes on her part.”

“Hm. And your ship, it is the first of its kind? And it has no name?”

“Again, according to Guildmaster Harrow it is. Said the inventor was a few hundred miles away and no one else knew a thing about it. As for the name, what does that matter?”

“The public enjoys giving a name to their fears, Ms. Hikoshi. Now, do you know which specific species were involved in the other incidents?”

‘Give a name to their fears’? I don’t like the sound of that. 

“No, just that there were seven of them, and that their known habitats only overlapped in a few places. Those will be the areas we’re investigating.”

The questions continued on, an endless torrent of increasingly accusatory demands. Hikoshi was uncomfortable with the whole thing, but didn’t stop answering. A half hour was nothing, and she really needed someone to walk her through the basics of a steam engine. 

Without warning, in the middle of one of her answers, Tantei stood and began gathering his things. He’d written no more than a page and a half of notes during the entire exchange. 

“Our allotted time is up, I’m afraid. Thank you for your cooperation. Ms. Adamat?” 

“Hm?” She looked up from her picking underneath her fingernails.

“You could have pressed me for more than half. A good deal more. You two have a pleasant evening now.” He made to leave, but just as he was laying a hand on the door he turned to look back at her. “And good luck to you on your trip, Ms. Hikoshi. More counts on it than you seem to have yet realized. Keep your Hunters focused, and on a tight leash.”

With that he stepped out of the door, once again pulling up his clothes to prevent them from sweeping the cobblestones. Despite the dire warning, Hikoshi only found herself wondering what the purpose of clothes you had to hold at all times was. A reporter seemed like the type that would have a flair for the dramatic, anyway. 

“Well!” Sagi said, clapping her hands together. “You just earned me a nice little bonus, girlie, and ya did it in a half hour. Let’s get you learning, yeah?.”

Hikoshi hopped up from the chair, relieved. It was the early afternoon, which left her a good few hours to pester Sagi with questions, but it was nothing next to the continuous months she was soon going to be spending taking care of the engine. This was every last minute crash course ship introduction she’d ever done, multiplied. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Hikoshi left the printing warehouse as the sun sank, head swimming with information. Gear ratios, flywheels, coal quality and density, pressure gauges, cranks and cogs and the hideous danger of superheated steam’s effect on flesh spiraled behind her eyelids. She’d never been a note taker before, but she’d been forced to take a spare sheet of paper to scrawl down details just to insure she didn’t forget some critical procedure or contingency. Six employees of the Adamat family printing presses had been maimed in as many years by misuse of the machinery, and two more had died in the fire that had stained the building just a few months prior. 

She sighed with contention, relaxing as she walked back to the Listless. She was exactly as in over her head as she’d expected from a Guild job. 

It was everything she’d ever wanted. 

Chapter Text

Sumi could think of only one problem with the airship. It had been finished only recently, and had obviously been made with care. She didn’t know the first thing about the standards for airship manufacturing, but Hikoshi’s borderline infantile noises of adoration as she caressed the ship were a good sign. It was apparently fast, which was a quality she didn’t know was attainable for a ship entirely reliant on the wind to move itself, but she liked the sound of it. Their quarters were simple, only a single cooking stove surrounded by three hammocks which swung above a chest for their belongings, but they could be blocked off by thick curtains that muffled noise well enough. Even the steam engine, with its strange ‘propellor’, was easy enough to accept after Hikoshi’s reassurances. 

In fact, the ship was nearly ideal. But it still didn’t have a name.

And that really grated on her. 

It really grated on Souta, too. Even Hikoshi was pulled away from her inspections after she saw them standing side by side, hands on their hips. 

“Stormwind.” Souta said.

“No.” Hikoshi and Sumi rejected simultaneously. 

“It can’t be a braggy name, Souta. That’s just asking for bad luck.” Hikoshi explained. 

“Really?” Sumi asked. “I just thought it sounded bad.”

“Also that, yeah.”

They stood together for a while longer, silent. The Guild’s dockhands had finished loading Hikoshi’s list of supplies some time ago, and they technically could have set off any time since. They continued to stare at the ship instead. 

It was diminutive in stature when compared to the Listless, Sumi considered. Its size would have astounded her had it landed in her village before , but now it felt sorely lacking. The fact that the hull was snuggly pressed against the envelope increased the sense of its frailty, if only because it felt much less ‘tall’ than if it had been dangling some feet below. 

“Shortstack.” Sumi suggested. 

Souta turned to Hikoshi. “Is there a rule against naming it after yourself?”

“You can only name an airship after a person that’s dead. Ocean ships only get the names of living people, and tradition says you’re supposed to change it when the person dies. Most people don’t because the paperwork’s a pain.”

“Paperwork ruins everything.”

They continued pondering. 

“Dot?” Hikoshi offered. 

Sumi and Souta shared a look. “Ehhh….” 

“I was just thinking, you know, because it’s so small that it’ll just look like a dot from the ground. It fits.”

“Better than what we’ve got so far, I guess. That’ll be our backup.”

They stood around for a while longer. Souta bounced in place, intense concentration plain from the set of his brows. After a moment, he spoke up. 

“How about… Stellar?” 

Hikoshi snorted. “You want to name a bag of hydrogen after a big ball of fire?”

“It’s not bragging, is it?”

“I guess not.”

Sumi tilted her head. “But it sounds kind of impressive, until you think about it.”

Hikoshi hummed. “Points for irony, at least.”

“The Stellar .” Sotua tried the name out, rolling it around his mouth. “I think it’s good. A little bit impressive, a little bit funny, and just self-deprecating enough to avoid tempting fate.”

“Of course you’d think your own idea was good.” Sumi jabbed.

“You don’t think it is?”

She sighed. “No. I think it’s pretty good, actually. Hikoshi? You’re the pilot, which I figure earns you veto power.”

“The Stellar …” Hikoshi tested the name herself, giving it due consideration. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll go for that. A name like that will make it seem like it was inevitable that I’d get it burnt to a crisp. Who could blame me, then?”

Souta clapped his hands together, stepping up to the ship. “Hikoshi’s profoundly concerning prophecy aside, it’s decided. The Stellar it is!” He made to get on, then looked back at Hikoshi. “Is there, like, any kind of ceremony here? Smash a bottle on the bow or something now that it has a name?”

“There is, but only after we’ve completed our first trip in it. Until then we just keep our fingers crossed.”

Souta heaved out a breath, then stepped up into the ship muttering. “Aviators. What a positive bunch.”

Sumi and Hikoshi followed through the door to the ship, heading for their ‘stations’. Those were, in fact, two thin chairs stationed behind Hikoshi’s desk. She sat on a swivel stool that let her face either the controls at the front of the ship or her desk, where she’d laid out piles of maps and documents pinned down by supply rations. The ‘helm’ was the largest of the ship’s three rooms, which meant it had just enough room for two people to extend their arms side-by-side without touching each other. A small hatch in the roof allowed access to the Stellar’s envelope, where the gas bags could be navigated between via a terrifyingly unstable rope bridge. 

The wood that composed the ship’s structure had, apparently, been the most expensive part of it. It was made of an exceptionally light species, one that was only marginally weaker than much denser alternatives. Importing it had been no small feat, if Hikoshi’s jealous muttering the night before while she’d gone over the specifications was anything to go by. 

The store room was behind them, and its cramped interior had been filled to the brim with goods. There wasn’t even shelving, to save on weight, so removing anything from the precisely organized towers was going to be nerve wracking. Sumi felt paranoid every time she had to squeeze through the tight hallway to reach their quarters. 

This area, at the rear of the ship, was where she’d likely be spending most of her time. The wood-fired stove at the rear was only a couple feet wide, with a tight space above it to hang a pot. The rear window took up almost all of the back wall at eye level, which meant that the glass nearest the stove was soon to be obscured by accidental scratches. 

 Visible through the window was the idle propeller. It was a dark wood, of a different type that made up the majority of the hull. It had been luxuriantly carved with sweeping curves, then painstakingly lacquered until it shined. If it hadn’t been speared through by slate-gray utilitarian steel she would have believed it was some kind of abstract art piece. Instead, it was merely part of the ship that was attached to the engine. 

Sumi looked down at the ominous hatch to the engine room below. The steam engine that turned the propeller was barely longer than a person, and the room that accommodated it reflected that. It could only be accessed when the hatch was open, unless you wanted to lay down in the coffin-like compartment. She hadn’t yet seen the contraption engaged, but she imagined it would make an awful racket. Hopefully they wouldn’t have to keep it running while they slept. 

Sumi returned to the helm, where Hikoshi was pressed up against the glass to watch the ground crew. She spun the wheel one way, received a thumbs-up from the Guild dockworker below, then hurried to the other side of the ship to repeat the process. 

The entire take-off procedure was overdrawn next to what Sumi had experienced on the Listless. The enclosed cabin meant that those on the ground had to undo the knots holding them down, shouting rhythmically the entire time to make sure they didn’t let only one side loose and end up tipping the ship. Hikoshi had a nervous expression throughout the entire process, though Sumi didn’t quite understand why. It wasn’t like they were going to discover at the last minute that the ship was too heavy to fly. The Stellar was already pulling at the reins, eager to lift itself to the morning skies. 

A critical juncture was reached as two more twinned weights were pulled loose from the sides of the ship. The Stellar began bucking upward, too buoyant to sit low any longer. The ground crew abandoned their calm pace, frantically removing the ties before they could pull the ship off balance. What had taken minutes to prepare was completed in seconds, the Stellar rising into the sky fast enough to make Sumi’s stomach sink. Like it or not, they were away. 

The city of Narrowstrait began to shrink beneath them as the Stellar rose past the stone spires, heading upward. Sumi noticed that they cleared the city’s walls when a gust took the ship from behind, tilting them forward. Hikoshi adjusted a lever, tilting the control panels at the back of the ship a few degrees while calmly maneuvering the wheel to straighten their heading. The Stellar accelerated far faster than its lumbering siblings, matching the pace of the wind that carried it in a few short minutes. The city continued to shrink beneath them as Hikoshi angled the ship into the wind, nudging them towards the current that would take them south along the coast. 

“You remember what I showed you?” Hikoshi asked without turning away from the controls. 

“Already?” 

“No time like the present. I’d like any problems to develop in friendly lands, not over deadly wilderness.”

“Alright…” Sumi muttered, heading for the engine at the back of the quarters. 

She gripped the latch on the trap door and flung it open, revealing the steam engine within. It was long and unpainted, with little covering its esoteric gears and pistons. Hikoshi had shown her how to start the thing, reassuring her that it was simple multiple times throughout the lesson. Sumi was of the opinion that it didn’t matter how simple her role was if the entire process was more complicated than she could comprehend. The teeming throngs of the jungle were less enigmatic than this man-made monstrosity. 

She grit her teeth, reaching down to start the engine. She was being overly dramatic, she chided herself, because she was nervous. She mentally thanked Hikoshi for deciding to try the engine near the city while it slowly whirred to life. The thought of nearby shelter, or at least a team to recover their charred and smashed corpses, was cathartic. 

The thumping, clanking, whistling racket eventually reached its apparent crescendo, settling into a consistently unnerving pace. Its exhaust, she could see, was being funneled out of the small space to be dumped outside as a trail of white vapor. As she scooted out of the engine compartment Sumi wondered if the people in the city below thought their ship was already on fire. 

Sumi shut the trap door, muting the rhythmic rattle. It had such a distinct pattern to it, one that she knew she’d be hearing in her dreams whether she wanted to or not. 

Psssh-thunk-claNK. Pssh-thunk-claNK. Psssh-thunk-claNK. 

The three beat pattern repeated itself twice a second, every second. As it likely would for months, Sumi realized. Months on end of that noise during every waking moment. She rubbed at the bridge of her nose, trying to stymie a brewing headache. 

She returned to the helm, drawing both of the fireproof curtains that separated the compartments in a vague attempt to muffle the engine further. It helped. Barely. 

But what she found in the helm was a fair enough reward, she supposed. Hikoshi was standing at the wheel, gripping its spokes with white knuckles. Sumi could see her expression in the glass’ reflection, alight with delight. She was speaking to Souta, who was sporting a vaguely entertained grin at their pilot’s excitement. 

“Do you realize how big of a deal that is, though?”

“Yeah, totally. I’ve been on airships for a good bit-” He started to answer before Hikoshi babbled on, having only stopped for breath. She might as well have been deaf at that moment.

“Cause I don’t think you do. I think I’m the only one here that gets how important this is. Look at what we’re doing right now! Look!” 

Sumi leaned against the glass, looking down below. The grassy plains were a few hundred feet away, barely moving beneath them. 

“We’re… standing still?” She asked. 

“Exactly! We’re standing still, against the wind! I think we might be heading forward a little bit, even, which means that we can move against the winds. Do you know what this is going to do for airships? For travel? I mean, for everything really, trade, communication, settling, exploring, anything and everything that’s about getting from one place to another. What do you think two of those engines would do, you guys? What about three, or four? Sumi, how much does it weigh, you think? How many could a ship like the Listless carry?”

“Enough to turn my headache into a migraine?” Sumi guessed. 

“Oh, boo-hoo. Sorry that the sound of a revolution is hurting your ears, princess.”

Souta leaned away from their bickering and thumped his head against the glass, looking out forlornly. “This is going to be a long trip, isn’t it?”

“Not as long as it would’ve been without the engine, though.” Hikoshi bubbled cheerfully. 

“A lot louder than it would have been, too.” Sumi countered. 

“How far is the frontier, again?” Souta asked.

“It’ll be about two weeks to the frontier, depending on the currents and how much this engine really helps. After that we’ll be relying on the old foot-mapped charts, and that’s almost worse than flying blind. Shouldn’t take more than a week to reach our first search zone, but that’s assuming the maps are accurate, which I doubt.”

Souta flicked his eyes to Sumi. “And will you be complaining about the noise the entire way?”

Sumi put a hand over her heart, affixing him with a solemn gaze. “I will complain at each and every opportunity presented to me. This I swear.”

His eyes slipped closed as he groaned. 

Life on the Stellar slipped subtly into routine, a natural pattern emerging over time. Souta spent most of his time in his hammock, reading the research material that he’d brought with him. Sumi usually did much the same, but up at her seat in the helm, where the engine’s noise was less grating. Despite her protests she had to admit that the noise had quickly faded out of her notice, too regular to pay much mind to. It helped that it was switched off in the night, Hikoshi too paranoid that it would drive them off course while she slept. 

When the sun fell and Hikoshi could no longer navigate by sight, save for the occasional glow of a city or village’s torches below, she would have the ship ascend into a more stable current high above the ground. Disengaging the levers to the Stellar’s control surfaces let them flap uselessly in the breeze, which kept the ship more or less floating along with the breeze. Sometimes Hikoshi would have to adjust their course in the morning, referencing the rivers and hills below to plot their place on the map, but it was never a serious problem. 

Those nights spent up in the sky were cold, though. Sumi hadn’t expected to unpack her travel kit’s blanket for weeks, but it proved necessary on the first night when the terrible chill creeped through the wooden slats of the ship. Hikoshi had laughed at her bitter reaction to the slight coolness, her padded aviator gear and long experience with altitude well suited for keeping her warm. Sumi’s only grumbled excuse had been that her entire life had been spent in a humid jungle, where cool weather had been a fanciful tale explained to her by the caravaneers. 

Despite their friendly bickering, however, they were growing closer. Within the first week Sumi found herself using Hikoshi’s lap as a leg rest while she read her books, Hikoshi doing much the same when she practiced her charting at the desk. The cramped space slowly turned cozy, the tight space no longer restrictive when they knew they would have been standing just as close in an open field. Souta’s occasional gagging noises were annoying, but tolerable. 

He’d missed their kiss, thankfully. Sumi had tried to play it off as a subtle, nearly accidental thing, but her heart had been pounding the entire time. As she’d prepared to go to her bunk on the fifth night she’d stepped past Hikoshi and bent over, pressing her lips to the top of her curly hair. It was little more than what her father had done with her mother before bed every night, but the step it represented felt cataclysmically intimidating. Hikoshi’s shoulders had raised up to her ears, scrunching up like she could hide within herself, but she’d made no noise of protest. Sumi was blushing furiously, but kept her voice professionally casual as she said goodnight. It was only when she passed into the cargo room that she’d caught Hikoshi’s eyes watching her in the glass’ reflection, which meant she had seen her furious blush and, quite likely, her pre-emptive psyching up before the kiss. Sumi had fled to her hammock without another word. 

After that a quick peck goodnight had become routine, just another part of the schedule, but it sent embarrassing flutters through her every time. It was on the cheek, the top of the head, or the shoulder, given by either one of them, but never anywhere more involved. 

Sumi was aware of the odd juxtaposition in her maturity every time she fell into her hammock, where her sword and shield hung above her on the wall. She’d fought Monsters and survived in the wilds, yet her knees practically wobbled from a little bit of normal flirting. She supposed that they were just different skill sets, ones that didn’t translate particularly well, but it still felt bizarre. She eventually decided it was for the better. She doubted Hikoshi would have enjoyed being the subject of the same kind of intense focus and brute force that Sumi reserved for a Hunt. 

Well, probably. At the very least it would have to come later in the relationship. 

As the days passed by, so too did the terrain beneath them. They hugged the coastline for many miles, one side of the ship facing the endless blue expanse while another showed the rolling green hills and estuaries. Herds of massive beasts, most commonly Apceros, were a pleasant distraction. There was almost always at least one herd in view, sometimes more. Sumi had practically stolen Souta’s spyglass to watch them, wishing that she’d purchased one in Narrowstrait. 

They sighted other things, too. A bipedal Anjanath, waiting upon a herd to pass by its small thicket of trees. It was surely camouflage well from the ground, only its snout sticking out from between the branches, but its red hide was as obvious as a signpost from above. Sadly, they passed it by before Sumi had the chance to watch it hunt. Another time, while she’d been watching the ocean, she’d spotted a distant fin breaking through the waves. Something a mile or more away had surfaced, utterly massive. She didn’t have time to grab the spyglass before it slipped away, but she spotted a half-dozen more of the fins along its length in descending size order. Whatever it was, its wake had been large enough to temporarily redirect the waves behind it for many miles. She’d spent the next few hours jotting down her observations to hopefully find an explanation when they returned to the Guild. 

Eventually Hikoshi turned them inward, descending to alight upon a different current that carried them towards the south-west. The rolling hills turned to flat yellow plains, decorated with scattered forests of thin and willowy trees. Farming villages were common here, often nestled in the center of a small forest protected by a ring of stakes and palisades. Apparently they didn’t have the spare stone for walls like Narrowstrait. Their fields were outside the defenses, though, and the villagers would go out to tend them in the day before returning home for the night. Sumi found herself oddly jealous of any village that lived in so peaceful a land that they could trust themselves to regularly walk outside the protection of their walls, even after Hikoshi had pointed out the regular watch posts that monitored for an approaching Monster. Hikoshi once took them low enough to spot individual people in the fields, and Sumi returned their excited waves as they passed. 

In the second week, when they were drawing nearer to the edge of the frontier, villages grew less common. The yellow grass became sparser and sparser, until little more than dirt covered the spaces between dry shrubs and dry trees. The rivers became streams and creeks, cutting a deeper and deeper ditch through the land. Eventually the ditches became trenches, then canyons, cracks that rippled across the surface of the earth like old worn leather. Sumi spotted only one village in that desert, hanging from the walls of a canyon in a spiderweb of rope bridges. Only stakes decorated the flat land above it.

She didn’t understand why it hadn’t been built up on the surface until some time later, when she spotted a Tigrex prowling through the land. It was a particularly large specimen, half again larger than the one she’d encountered before. When it came to a large gap between the plateaus it took a running start, leaping forward with its legs extended. The fan-like ‘wings’ on its front legs, the ones that she’d assumed were vestigial, spread wide. Rather than falling down below, it glided across the gap and came to a scraping stop on the other side, head raised to search for prey. 

Its head cocked as it spotted the Stellar above it, then it bellowed a roar of challenge so loud that it rattled the glass of the airship windows some thousand feet above itself. Sumi shuddered, the familiar tone bringing back unwanted memories of linen-wrapped bodies and burning homes. She gave Hikoshi a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder. 

It was the afternoon after the Tigrex sighting when Hikoshi quietly cleared her desk, rolling up the map that she’d been using for the last two days and putting it away. Sumi expected her to pull out the next map as she always had before, but instead she brought out a blank sheet so large it nearly covered the table, pinning it down at the corners with corked inkwells. 

“Hikoshi?” Sumi prompted. “Is there not a map for this area?” 

“Only foot traveler’s maps. No one’s flown an airship out here before.” 

Sumi disentangled her legs from Hikoshi’s lap, stepping up to the front window. The cracked desert had given way to hills of shrub-dotted sand some few hours ago, as dead an environment as Sumi had yet seen. There was still life, of course. She’d spotted the occasional grazer working their way through the sparse vegetation, but she’d grown up in a jungle. To her this was barren. 

“You don’t trust the foot traveler’s maps enough to rely on them?” Sumi asked. Hikoshi made a noise of confusion, glancing back at her. Sumi gestured to the empty paper. 

“Look closer, in the lower right corner.” Sumi leaned down, inspecting the paper. Sure enough, the map did have markings on it. They had just been so small she’d taken them as artifacts of wrinkled paper. The lower right corner was criss-crossed by eight or so lines, some solid, others dotted or dashed. “I don’t have a key, but that’s because I made it. Transposed the records from previous explorations onto the map I’m using for our trip. Dotted lines are shrubland, dashed are rivers. The solid line is the mountain range, which no one’s crossed in recent years, as far as I can tell. I figure someone must have, since the Guild told us about the Monster’s habitats overlapping beyond it, but when I asked for all their maps of the region this is what they gave me.” 

“Probably got the info from some old hardass Hunter that refuses to pick up a quill,” Souta’s tired voice floated into the conversation from behind the cargo room’s curtain, which he parted to join them in the helm. “Oh, good, you’re not crawling all over each other. I didn’t want to see that.”

“Shouldn’t have wing-manned me then, loser.” Sumi reminded him.

“I didn’t expect her to be tagging along!” He whined while leaning next to Sumi at the table, inspecting the marks Hikoshi had made. “So we’re getting near the mountains?” He asked. Hikoshi nodded in confirmation.

“As is, we’ll reach them around midnight tonight. I don’t like the idea of trying to fly through a valley blind, though, so I’m planning to anchor us at sunset so we can try it tomorrow.” 

“Do we know of any convenient crossing points?”

“Not really. Only one explorer went along the mountain line, and they were only looking for a way through on foot. They didn’t record if anywhere was low enough for an airship to squeeze through effectively.”

“Must have been a while ago, then, if he wasn’t considering airships.”

“Nope,” HIkoshi tapped a finger on the table in irritation. “They were the most recent exploration, about ten years ago. So if either of you ever see them at the Guild I want you to let them know I hate them, and that their mapping skills suck.”

“Duly noted,” Souta agreed dryly, looking out the window. “I’ve been napping. How long until sunset?” 

“Probably six or seven hours? We’ll wake you up if you’re still napping, but this isn’t the jungle. It’s not hard to set her down and set up an anchor.” 

“Well hey, I’ll take any excuse not to work. Let me know if you need me.” Souta retreated back to his bunk, leaving them alone again. Sumi thought about joining him, to study up a bit more on what they knew of the area they were traipsing into, but after two weeks she sincerely doubted there was anything left to learn. Instead she slipped around the table to stand next to Hikoshi, looking at the map. 

“Big paper you’ve got here. Just how far are you expecting us to have to go?” 

“If I had my way, as far as possible. A Guild contract that pays by the week without a predetermined end doesn’t come by often, you know. If I play this right I could retire at the ripe age of twenty-two.”

“You’re nineteen.” 

“Yeah, by my math it’d take about three straight years of exploring to get enough money to retire. More, really, if I actually want to live off more than the basics.”

“Bad news, then, because I don’t plan to stay out here for years. Did anyone tell you that four of those invasive attacks actually wiped out their respective villages? One attacker could only be identified by tracks and bite marks, since no one was left to give a report.”

Hikoshi whistled low, drumming her fingers. “I didn’t know the particulars, but I knew it was bad. How big was the village?”

“Little more than a hundred people at the last census. According to the Guild report the real number was probably higher, on account of the number of cribs found.”

Hikoshi winced. “Now that’s just excessively morbid.”

“Yeah. Glad it didn’t happen to my village.”

Hikoshi bumped hips with her, flashing her a warm smile. “It couldn’t have happened to your’s. You had two Hunters protecting it, and one of them wasn’t even Souta.”

Sumi snorted. “I know I give him crap, but you should know he’s really not a bad Hunter. Check out his journals sometime. They’re impressive.”

“I’d rather stay ignorant of his skill, thank you. He needs the ego check.” 

Hikoshi sighed and leaned into her, resting her head on top of Sumi’s. If anyone else had done it, it would have bugged her, but instead she just wrapped an arm around Hikoshi’s hip. 

“Something bugging you?” 

“Kind of,” She muttered into Sumi’s hair. “But it’s dumb, so don’t worry.”

“Well now I’m curious.”

Hikoshi sniffed, self-conscious. “I’m just really irritated that we’re not over the mountains yet.”

“Really?”

“I told you it was dumb.”

“We’re less than a day away from a goal you’ve had your entire life, and now is when you start to get impatient?”

“I’m an impatient person!” She defended with a self-aware laugh. 

Sumi rolled her eyes and tightened her grip around Hikoshi’s waist, her heart starting to pound as an idea occurred to her. She vacillated on it for a moment, indecisive, before falling back to her reliable standby: screw it.

Sumi dropped into the pilot chair, dragging Hikoshi squealing down with her. She settled the taller girl into her lap, arm snug around her waist. Hikoshi squirmed for a second before giving up.

“Then let’s just follow Souta’s lead and nap until we get there. It’ll make it go by faster, at least.”

“In your lap ?” Sumi shrugged as nonchalantly as possible, even when she knew Hikoshi could probably feel her heart beating out of her chest against her back. 

“My chair’s not as comfy as yours.”

“They’re the exact same chair.”

Sumi loosened her grip. “Do you not want to?”

“No! No, no, it’s fine.” Hikoshi babbled, pulling Sumi’s arm back across her stomach. “This is fine. At least, it’s fine for me, you know. Am I not too heavy, though? I’m way taller than you--”

“And I could still bench press you one handed. I don’t know how far this Hunter resilience thing goes, but I’m pretty sure you could sock me straight in the jaw and I’d barely feel it.”

“You sure you’re not feeling uncomfortable?”

Sumi snuggled her chin into the crook of Hikoshi’s neck, kicking her feet up to rest on the desk. Hikoshi curled up like a cat on top of her, resting her legs on Sumi’s shins and her head over her shoulder. 

“Right about now the only thing I’m feeling is soft and warm. Now take a nap, worrywart. I’ll let you know when we get there.”

“Like you won’t fall asleep, too.” Hikoshi murmured into her ear, a sensation that definitely did not send shivers up Sumi’s spine. At least, hopefully not in a way that was easy to notice. 

“Shut up and go to sleep already.”

“Aye-aye, Madam Hunter.” Hikoshi whispered. She leaned into Sumi’s ear, ever so slightly brushing her lips against her skin as she spoke. Sumi’s hand clenched involuntarily against Hikoshi’s stomach, which twitched with poorly suppressed giggles. 

“Oh, screw you…” Sumi whispered back. She’d really been hoping Hikoshi hadn’t noticed that before. 

They rested together, the afternoon sun glinting through the glass. 

Sumi woke to a night-darkened helm, the tale-tale thumping of the engine silent. She glanced out the window and saw anchor lines dangling from both sides of the ship, tying them to the ground. She shifted slightly, to avoid waking Hikoshi, and felt a piece of paper in her hand. She lifted it up.

It was a piece of scrap paper. On it was a small doodle of Souta sticking his finger in his mouth, violently gagging. She crumpled it up with a chuckle, tossing it to the floor. Hikoshi shifted slightly on top of her, nuzzling deeper into Sumi’s neck. She shushed her quietly, and closed her own eyes once more. 

Chapter Text

Sumi woke to the sound of howling winds and snapping lines. She surged to her feet without thought, groping for the sword that wasn’t at her hip. After a few moments of stumbling confusion she managed to blink sleep away from her eyes. 

The ship was tilted, leaning too far to her left to make sense. She stumbled as the ship twisted, spinning about itself in the howling breeze. Sumi tried to look outside to see what was happening, but the far side of the windows revealed only darkness. Hikoshi was already at the wheel, fighting with the controls to right the ship. Only a small lantern provided light in the cabin, and its wild swinging threw shadows across the space. All the while the wind continued to howl, battering the Stellar. 

“What’s going on?” She yelled at Hikoshi.

“Cold wind’s blowing in. Storm’s brewing, it looks like.”

“We were in a desert!” 

“Yeah, so for everyone not in an airship it’s going to be a very pleasant night. Not us, though.”

Souta burst in from the cargo room, holding himself steady with a hand against the wall. Sumi wanted to laugh when she saw that he’d slipped on his breastplate, as if he were going to fight the storm, before remembering that her first instinct had been to grab her sword. 

“The hell is going on?” Souta barked.

“Storm!” Sumi answered. 

“In a desert?” He asked incredulously. 

“I know, right?” 

“Sumi!” Hikoshi yelled. Sumi jumped to attention. “I need you to take the wheel, try and keep the wind at our tail. I’ve got to go up and adjust the buoyancy or else we’re going to end up smashed into the ground.”

“I don’t know how to fly an airship!” She protested, but Hikoshi had already stepped away from the wheel, which began to spin wildly. Sumi lunged at it in desperation. 

“Spin it lefty to go left, righty to go right!” Hikoshi instructed, unlatching the trapdoor that led into the envelope above. 

“That really doesn’t help much!”

“I’ll just be a second, alright?” The trapdoor swung down, revealing the unlit envelope above filled with hydrogen gas bags. It was pitch black, and an open flame was far too risky to bring inside, with the only navigable path an unsteady set of ropes tied from end to end. The only handholds were the wooden superstructure that kept the leather gas bags in place. Hikoshi took a deep, calming breath. “Souta, give me a lift.”

He locked his hands together without hesitation, offering them as a step. Hikoshi put her foot in his palms and was thrown up above a moment later. 

Sumi turned to focus on the wheel, trying to gauge where the wind was coming from. Occasional drops of rain splattered across the glass, and she used their lantern-lit streaks as her only indication of the wind’s direction. Clouds had blocked out the moon and stars, leaving the Stellar as the only light floating in a black void. 

All she could do to help Hikoshi right now was keep the ship as steady as possible. The wheel would tug in her hands, wind railing against the control surfaces to rip them from one direction to another. The only thing she knew to do was wrench the wheel in the opposite direction, hopefully correcting the motion. 

There were two levers on the ground beside the wheel, and despite the fact that Sumi had spent the last two weeks watching Hikoshi pilot the Stellar she couldn’t for the life of her recall what to do with them. She knew they had something to do with the angle of the ship, but which did what was anyone’s guess.

“Souta!” Sumi hissed. He’d walked up behind her, holding onto the nailed-down desk to steady himself. “Do you remember how to change the ship’s pitch?”

“What? No, why would I know that? You’re the one that spent all your time up here!” 

“Yeah, but I wasn’t exactly paying attention to the mechanics of flying the ship!”

“Oh, I know exactly what you were paying attention to.”

The ship tilted wildly forward, threatening to throw her over the wheel to smash her face into the glass. 

“Now is not the time, Souta!”

“Try the left one!” 

Sumi reached down with a foot to the left lever, which was pressed nearly as far forward as it could go. She hooked her shoe around it and yanked it back, against the tilt of the ship.

The nose immediately dove, flipping Sumi over the wheel entirely. 

Sumi locked her hands on the wooden spokes hard enough for her fingers to crack the wood, pulling herself away from the window. The last thing she wanted was to smash the glass out. 

“Put it back!” Sumi screeched at Souta. “Put it back, putitbackputitbackputitback!” He was hanging on to the table leg, his feet swinging near the ship’s controls. 

“I’m trying!” He yelled, swinging a leg towards the lever. It took several attempts before his boot managed to reach it, roughly knocking it forward. 

The Stellar began to right itself slowly, every so slowly, but not fast enough. Sumi managed to put her feet on the solid wood of the wall beneath the window. She dropped onto it, freeing her hand to reach up and pull the other lever down, towards the front of the ship.

The ship flipped upward so suddenly that Sumi fell forward, thumping into the floor that had been a wall just a moment before. 

The wheel spun wildly without anyone holding it until Souta jammed an arm between the spokes. He yelped as his forearm was painfully pinned to the stand that held the wheel, but the ship stopped its swaying. 

Sumi didn’t get time to catch her breath. The slowly righting ship was now tilting too far upward, forcing them to slide back towards the cargo hold. Sumi lunged for the right lever again, pushing it into a more middle position. The tilt stopped, for now, but the wind showed no signs of calming.

A series of hisses sounded from above, moving closer in succession. Sumi felt the ship begin to ascend, her body growing heavy as they shot upward. She tried to focus on keeping the ship level, both levers grasped in a death grip. Souta, above her, focused on controlling the wheel.

For a few tense minutes they managed to keep the most erratic of the ship’s gyrations under control, though any semblance of a chosen direction or goal beyond survival was a pipe dream. Hisses continued to sound from above as Hikoshi did whatever she was doing, and she could occasionally feel their ascent accelerate. 

The trap door was swinging freely behind them the entire time, and Sumi found herself watching it anxiously. Hikoshi had been in the pitch black envelope the entire time the ship had been performing its unplanned aerobatics, and that worried Sumi. The fact that she could hear hisses above were encouraging, but the worst of her imagination attributed that to Hikoshi’s lifeless corpse flopping across the ropes, puncturing the gas bags as it rolled. 

Her worries proved mostly unfounded when Hikoshi’s feet appeared through the trapdoor, followed by the rest of the girl a moment later as she dropped down. 

“Are you alright?” Sumi demanded, though she couldn’t let go of the levers to stand and run over to her.

“For the most part, I think.” Hikoshi answered, turning around. A bloody gash had appeared across her cheekbone, complimenting a growing black eye. Hikoshi wiped her hand across her face, looking at the blood smeared on her hand. “I’ve had worse.”

“Glad to hear that,” Souta butted in, too focused on controlling the wheel to turn and face Hikoshi. “Mind if you come and take over for us? I’ve got no damn idea what I’m doing.”

“Yeah, I got that impression while I was up there,” Hikoshi sniped as she hurried to the helm, taking the wheel from a grateful Souta. He whistled as he got a look at her face.

“Ooh, nice shiner. That’ll stick around for a while.”

Hikoshi only grumbled as she began to steer, the violent rocking of the ship lessening instantly. Her fingers danced across the wheel, making micro adjustments to counter the winds before Sumi could have even felt the movement. 

“We should be out of the worst of it soon, I think.” Hikoshi began. “We have to be near the front of the wedge, so it shouldn’t be too high here. Sumi, can you keep working the elevators? I can’t adjust them on the fly and do the wheel at the same time.”

“Got it.” Sumi answered, though it felt like a lie. She really didn’t understand the explanation, or how to work the levers. She’d try all the same.

“Souta, did you pay attention when I taught Sumi to start the engine?”

“For the most part.”

“Good. Get it going, now . We’re going to need it.”

Souta jogged away without retort, his usual snarkiness mostly stowed for the duration of the current emergency. Sumi knew it would be back with a vengeance, though. 

The rocking of the ship was steadily lessening, Sumi needing to make fewer and fewer adjustments of the levers in front of her. 

“Isn’t it getting better?” She asked. “Seems like the worst of it’s behind us. What do we need to get away from?”

Hikoshi shook her head. “We’re not outrunning it, we’re outclimbing it. But it’ll catch us again, and soon. Calm air is slow air, and we need more speed.”

“Will we be fast enough to outrun it?” 

“In terms of ground speed?” Hikoshi’s brow furrowed in thought. “I doubt it. The engine will help, but it doesn’t make that much of a difference. Our only hope is to use it to climb higher than the mountains before the cold front catches us again.”

“What happens if it catches us? Wind alone can’t sink the ship, right?”

“No, but slamming into the side of a mountain can.”

“Oh.”

A tense silence ruled the helm for a moment, until the distinctive clanking of the engine starting up behind them filled the air. It had an odd sound to it, unfamiliar at first, but it quickly settled into its rhythm as Souta got the hang of it. 

“Do you know how high we have to be to pass over the mountains?” Sumi asked. 

“No. Charts didn’t record their height, and it isn’t like I can tell you our altitude without a visual reference.”

Souta reappeared back in the cabin, now wearing his helmet in addition to his breastplate. 

“If I start feeling loopy I’ll let you know that we’re too high,” He offered. 

Sumi eyed his helmet, which seemed profoundly unnecessary. “What is your armor to you? A pacifier, or something? Calms you down?”

Souta put a hand to his chest in mock horror. “Excuse you, Sumi. This armor isn’t a pacifier, it’s my safety blanket! It makes me feel safe and in control.”

“But you know you’re not, right?”

“All that matters is that I feel like I am.”

Hikoshi sighed and gave Sumi a pitying look. 

“He’s wearing it so he won’t smash his head into the wall when we’re caught up in the winds again, something he knows to do because he’s actually spent some time on airships, unlike you. Go get your helmet from the bunk, and grab me my cap, please.”

Sumi harrumphed. She hadn’t expected Hikoshi to take Souta’s side. It made sense, though, so she reluctantly let go of the levers to head to the back. The winds were calm enough that Hikoshi could manage them well enough on her own.

Sumi passed through the cargo hold, having to step over a number of loose supplies that had tumbled to the floor. She made a mental note to strap them to the wall in the future. 

She entered their cabin as the ship began slowly tilting upward, a much more controlled motion than before. Hikoshi was pointing them towards the sky, using the propeller to help them gain altitude. 

The steam engine seemed unusually loud beneath the deck as she gathered her helmet from her trunk and dug through Hikoshi’s belongings to find her padded aviator’s cap. She didn’t know the slightest thing about the contraption, so she could only assume that its increased stress was on account of the unusual angle they flew at. It wasn’t used to pushing against the full weight of the ship like this. 

Sumi returned to the cabin while buckling her steel helmet on, tossing Hikoshi her cap. She caught it with a single hand, pulling it over her curled hair in a practiced motion. 

Souta had fallen into his usual seat, to the left of and behind Hikoshi. 

“So, pilot. How long until we’re forced into our second go at riding the storm?”

“That depends on how fast it’s coming up on us. Either of you take a wind speed measurement?” Sumi and Souta glanced at each other incredulously. Hikoshi scoffed. “I’m stuck on a ship with amateur aviators while flying into a storm. Great.”

“We’re not even amateur aviators. We’re not aviators, period. The fact that you could handle this all on your own was kind of the whole crux of your application, if you recall?” 

“Sure, I’ll probably be fine. But that doesn’t mean the next few hours wouldn’t be a lot less stressful if I had a pair of Captains instead of a pair of Hunters.”

Sumi flopped into her seat, stretching out as much as she could in the small room. 

“Yeah, but you’d be a lot hungrier with the captains. Once those rations run out we’re your only meal ticket on the other side of those mountains.”

“Neither of you have brought me a single piece of wild game since this trip started. I was expecting roasted boar every night, not dried jerky.”

“What, you expected us to tie a spear to a string to catch something? The first time you’ve had us land on this entire trip was last night!”

“And what did you use that time for, Sumi? Not hunting, that’s for sure. You curled up to nap with your girlfriend, that’s what you did.”

“Wha--” Sumi leaned forward as if to choke her. “Hikoshi, you’re my girlfriend!”

“Irrelevant!” She shouted, taking a hand off the wheel to wave the point away without turning around. 

Souta groaned dramatically, going boneless in his chair. “I swear, you two have the most obnoxious relationship I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh, sure, Souta. I’m sure you get along fabulously with your wife. Never a single joke between the two of you.”

“He has a wife? ” Hikoshi sputtered, astounded.

“I know, right? I knew him for like three months before he told me!”

Souta wiped his hand across his face, already anticipating the course of the conversation. “Why do you care so much about the fact that I didn’t tell you I had a wife? Why would you need to know that in the first place?”

“It’s usually something that comes up in casual conversation for most people.”

“I was training you to be a Hunter! We weren’t chatting about our home life, we were talking about how to find gaps in armor, or, like, how to identify different dung droppings.”

The wind was slowly starting to pick up again, but Hikoshi was apparently unwilling to let this rich vein of mockery go untapped. “How long has it been since you’ve seen your wife, Souta?”

He scratched underneath his helmet. “Six months or so, I guess?” 

“Aren’t you twenty two or something? How long have you two been married?”

“We got married when I was nineteen, so we’re coming up on our three year anniversary.”

Hikoshi chortled at that. “So you haven’t seen your wife for a sixth of your entire marriage? How much do you even know about her? Think she’ll remember your face?”

Souta set his jaw, meeting Hikoshi’s eyes through the window’s reflection. “Her name is Yazutsu, she’s five foot six when she’s wearing her favorite pair of shoes, she likes the bunny-shaped fluffs from the bakery two blocks down from her house more than anything else, and she hasn’t cut her hair since she was twelve years old. She’s got beautiful handwriting and she’s great with numbers because she wants to become a census taking clerk, which’ll hopefully let her travel with me while I Hunt, even if she doesn’t like the idea of working for--” 

“Oh, hold on,” Hikoshi put a finger up, squinting intensely through the window. Souta leaned forward, trying to see whatever it was Hikoshi had spotted through the glass. After a moment Hikoshi pulled away and nodded to herself. “Yep, I was about to vomit. Never tell me another thing about her, thank you.”

Souta let out a loud bark of laughter. “Hey, you asked!”

“I didn’t expect you to start telling me about her shoe size while twirling a finger in your hair, though.”

Souta leaned back in his chair with a smug smile. “What can I say? I love my wife.”

A wide-eyed revelation spread across Hikoshi’s face. She turned to Sumi, eyes glistening. “Oh my god. I get it now. Why he’s always gagging when we hug. It’s disgusting.”

Sumi was unsympathetic. “Not going to stop us, though, is it?”

“Nope.”

The wind chose that moment to truly pick up again, whipping against the taut leather of the envelope. Hikoshi’s attention was forced back to the task at hand as she began countering the vicious wind.

The temperature in the cabin was dropping steadily. Sumi reached out a hand to the window, touching it with the back of her hand. It was almost painfully cold, a sensation Sumi had never known before. She could feel the glass bending and rattling in its frame with the force that was being thrown at it. She pulled her hand away and shivered, thankful for the first time that the Stellar didn’t have an open deck. She didn’t know what winds that cold felt like, and she had no desire to learn. 

Rare raindrops smacked against the glass, but there was no torrent from the storm. They were still above a desert after all, no matter how high they were. As a matter of fact, Sumi realized she still had no idea how high they were. And none of them knew how high the mountains they needed to avoid were.

“Uh, Hikoshi?” She asked. 

“Hm?” She grunted, too focused to give a more intelligible response.

“How will we know when we’re near the mountains? Or, you know, if we’re high enough to avoid them?”

“The clouds should…” She trailed off for a moment while she flung the wheel to the left, then to the right. “The clouds should break around the mountains. The other side’s jungle, this side’s desert. As long as we get there at the front of the cold front, we should--” 

She was interrupted by light bursting into the cabin from outside as the Stellar breached through the clouds. The moon was nearly full on the horizon, and stars sparkled in every direction. Sumi rushed to the window, gasping at the boiling cloudbank below them. She turned her head to the right, looking behind the ship, and was even more astounded.

An enormous thunderhead was rising upward, curling towards them in a breaking wave. It was the first time she’d ever been close enough to grasp the scale of something like this, and it was still nearly incomprehensible. It stretched higher into the sky than she thought possible while its base seemed to consume the entire world beneath, smothering the desert in a blanket of lightning-lit gray. She tried to press the image in her mind, determined to immortalize the sight in her journal. 

The storm was also, she noted, drawing closer to them. 

She turned to her left, instincts telling her to shout a useless warning to Hikoshi, but the words died in her mouth as she saw the mountains. 

They weren’t high enough. The stories she’d heard from the caravaneers as a child had led her to expect a row of dagger-tipped hills, white-capped mountaintops arranged neatly like the saw teeth of a piranha. Instead she was presented with an impenetrable wall of cold stone, with little in the way of individual mountains. The entire range rose and fell inscrutably, only occasionally coming to a distinct peak. They were the largest things she’d ever seen, and she was absolutely certain that they were nowhere near high enough to slip over even the lowest valley. 

“Hey, guys?” Hikoshi spoke quietly. “You know how you said you weren’t aviators?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Well, congratulations on your promotion from ‘passengers’ to ‘crew’. I’m your captain now, and that means for the next hour you do everything I say, when I say it. Understood?”

Souta’s eyes were wide. Hikoshi’s voice was far too level, the tone alien to the personality they’d known. 

“Um. Aye-aye, Captain?” Souta tried awkwardly. 

Hikoshi didn’t respond at first. Her lips were moving silently, her eyes darting across the mountain range as she performed some kind of mental calculus. After a dozen breaths of frozen anxiety, the tension broke. Hikoshi began giving orders. 

“Souta. Evaluate the cargo for a ratio of weight to importance, and get rid of everything that falls beneath a tolerable threshold. If it’s heavy and we won’t die on the other side of the mountains without it, toss it. Sumi, get back to the bunks. My trunk has the instructions for the engine on the left side, tucked into a pocket. Read it and figure out every way you can get us more speed. The gas bags are giving us everything they’ve got, the engine’s the only thing we have left. But bring me Souta’s telescope, first.”

Sumi and Souta bolted, heading for their tasks. She passed Souta in the cargo room as he lit a lantern, crouching to survey their supplies. She threw open Souta’s trunk, tossing the disorganized mess aside until she found his folded up spyglass. She sprinted back through the cargo room, ignoring his plea to be careful with it, as she always did. 

Hikoshi didn’t react to her arrival in any way other than to open her hand for Sumi to drop the spyglass into. She did so, then darted back to the rear of the ship. 

Sumi dropped to her knees and skidded to a stop in front of Hikoshi’s trunk, pulling the engine’s instructions from within. 

Their lives now depended on two pages, handwritten on the front and back. Sumi hadn’t looked at the instructions before, trusting Hikoshi to take care of it, but she desperately wished she had now.

She skipped past the start-up procedure, the fuel consumption rates, and the diagram labeling different parts. She flipped the page over, trying to find anything about getting more power from the engine. 

She found nothing. By the way it was written, the design only had two modes: not working and working. She swore as she scrambled across the floor with the papers, trying not to crush them. She undid the latch to the fireproofed engine box, throwing it open. She was a blacksmith, wasn’t she? She shaped metal, made things with it. And this thing was definitely made of metal. She had to be able to figure out something , right?

The clank of the engine was oppressive when the trapdoor had been lifted. Sumi hopped down into the space, hissing as her calf brushed against the hot metal. 

The rear of the engine was up by the fuel box, where coal was burned. She referenced the diagram again and realized that most of what she had thought was the fuel box was the water tank, which held the water that would be heated into steam. That tank was actually nearly as large as the rest of the engine itself, it seemed. She followed the diagram with her finger, pointedly ignoring the way her hands shook. 

The steam was carried by a central tube to two vertical pistons, which powered a wheel that was attached to the spike of steel that connected the propeller outside the Stellar. Her father had taught her that she should think of every new process she encountered backward, starting at her goal and working her way through what would be needed to achieve it.

In this case, what she wanted was simple. The propeller needed to spin faster. That meant the shaft needed to spin more, which required the pistons moving faster, which required that they be fed with more steam, and be fed it faster than they were now. How could she achieve that?

Her finger traced over a valve on the diagram, placed on the tube that carried the steam to the pistons. It looked like a later addition to the diagram, drawn on with a different brush. From what she could see it constricted the flow of steam, narrowing the diameter of the tube for a time so that only so much could pass through. 

She had a target, now. If she could widen that pipe then more steam would be allowed through, giving more power to the pistons, which would spin the wheel and thus propeller faster. Now she just needed to figure out how to do it.

Sumi tossed the papers aside and reached for the valve, prepared to wrench it open. Instead she found herself screaming as she pulled her hand away, skin reddened by the heat of the metal. She swore to herself several times, ignoring Souta’s calls asking if she was alright.

Sumi hopped out of the engine box, digging into her trunk. Unlike Souta’s, it had been organized, and she found her armored gloves in short order. The metal plating wouldn’t have been much better than touching the scalding surface directly, but their palms were a thick leather, which should buy her some time before the heat seeped through. 

She dropped back into the engine room, reaching for the valve with both hands. Immediately her palms grew warm, but she ignored that as she threw her back into moving the valve.

It twisted in her grip with an awful shriek, ever so slowly. Sumi adjusted her feet for more grip and grunted with effort, pulling at it with all her strength. Slowly, ever so slowly, it began to twist around. The pistons began to pump just a little bit faster, but it wasn’t enough. 

She redoubled her pulling, sweat breaking out on her brow from the effort of it and the toxic heat of the engine box. 

She mentally cursed whoever had designed the ridiculous engine. She was a Hunter, and she could only barely budge the valve. How could any normal person be expected to do this?

With a startling shriek of scraping steel, the valve gave way. Sumi fell back against the wall, taken by surprise as the wheel spun freely in her hand. She let out a whoop of joy, opening it fully. The pistons of the engine began to roar, accelerating to little more than a blur. The whir of the propeller outside the ship became audible even through the wall.

Sumi hopped out of the engine box as the ship’s angle steepened, Hikoshi using the newfound power to drive them into the sky. Sumi could only hope that it would be enough to take them over the mountains. 

She slammed the engine box’s trap door shut, joining Souta in the cargo room. He’d smashed the closest window in the helm, and had begun the process of throwing out everything he’d deemed inessential. He’d tossed them into a loose pile in the middle of the walkway, so Sumi hopped over it and began handing the packages to him. They worked in a rhythm, not a word shared. 

The engine roared behind them, wind whipped through the broken window, and the mountains drew ever closer. 

It took less than a minute for Sumi and Souta to finish throwing out what remained of the inessentials. Both of them were breathing hard, and Sumi’s left hand throbbed where she’d grabbed the overheated valve. Souta approached Hikoshi from behind, leaning to yell into her ear to be heard. 

“We’ve tossed everything we can!”

“Everything?” Hikoshi asked, glancing at the cargo room. A number of boxes and packages still littered the floor.

“The only thing left are my arrows, medical supplies, and our journals. If we toss those then we might as well turn around as soon as we get over the mountains, because there won’t be any more point to the expedition!”

“If we crash into the mountain there won’t be much point either!” Hikoshi countered.

“I’ll toss ‘em right now if we can’t make it otherwise. Can we?”

Hikoshi bit her lip, staring at the not-so-distant mountain range. It seemed to Sumi that they were aimed for a small V formation, little more than a dip between two peaks. It was their only shot. 

“We can make it!” Hikoshi decided, shouting it. “We can make it like this! We can make it!” 

She repeated the words over and over, like a religious mantra. It sounded to Sumi like she was trying to convince herself. Sumi leaned into Hikoshi’s other ear.

“I’ll get you another shot at this. The Guild won’t like it if we come back early, but they’ll resupply us, I swear. Dying won’t get you any closer to the other side of those mountains than turning around will. Dying won’t get you any closer to your dream, alright?”

Hikoshi gripped the wheel. Sumi stepped closer to her, putting a hand on her shoulder while Hikoshi grit her teeth. The wind whipped through the cabin, carrying away the sound of Souta’s gagging. For a moment, it was just Hikoshi at the helm, in charge of everything. 

Her eyes flashed, a wicked and toothy smile shining through her grim expression. 

“I know that. But I’m gonna make it. I’m gonna get this ship through that gap, and there’s no one that can do a damn thing about it!” 

“Alright!” Sumi shouted, pulling away. Souta gave her a firm clap on the back, returning to his seat. The mountains were drawing closer, and they’d done everything possible to prepare. The only thing left to do was wait the few minutes that remained until they either sailed over the snowy peak or fell to their death. 

Sumi waited in her chair beside Hikoshi silently for a while, eyeing the gap. It was going to be close, but Hikoshi had said they could make it. She believed her. 

Even with their new speed the storm was slowly catching up with them. Besides her helmet Sumi was still dressed in the attire she’d brought with her from the jungle, and she was rapidly being chilled to the bone. Eventually she stood, heading back to her hammock to retrieve her blanket. Maybe she could pin it up, to keep some of the wind out. 

The engine’s roar changed in pitch just as Sumi set foot into the room. Then it stopped. 

She glanced down at the trap door just before it lifted off its hinges, a geyser of steam carrying it into the ceiling. The metal door impaled itself there, throwing shrapnel across the room. 

Sumi’s hands instinctively reached to cover her face, but she had no armor. Fragments of wood and boiling steam shredded her forearms, blowing her backward into the cargo room. She opened her eyes to a terrible hiss filling the air, white vapor rising from her body in front of her eyes. Her skin reddened. 

The pain hit her. Scorching, awful agony seared through her limbs, crushing her throat until it squeezed out a hideous gargling scream. Sumi kicked her legs to propel herself along the deck, her subconscious trying to escape a threat that had already done its damage.

The only thing terrifying enough to force herself back to her senses was the silence. Terrible, awful, silence. 

The engine had stopped. The propeller, she could see through the rear window, had stopped. The shaft that supported it was twisted and wrong, bent to an unusable degree. The momentum of its sudden arrest had thrown the ship sideways, overpowering Hikoshi’s ability to correct the spin. Sumi looked up from the ground, towards the helm. Outside the window, approaching ever so calmly, was the lip of the mountain. 

“HOLD ON!” Hikoshi screamed, kicking a lever forward. 

The ship rolled sideways, so steeply that the wall of the cargo room behind her suddenly became the floor. Sumi fell against it just as a rippling crack split the air.

Sumi saw, in the space of a single blink, rocks jutting through the opposite side of the room. An ear-splitting scrape filled the air as the ship was dragged along the mountain face by its own momentum. 

Sumi saw the first snow of her life as it was forced through the ragged gap in the wall, filling the room in seconds with white powder. The shriek stopped a moment later, the ship rebounding into the air. 

The storm caught them in earnest as they floated helplessly mere feet above the mountaintop. A great curtain of white snow erupted from the mountain as the wind threw it into the air, coating the windows to the point of uselessness in seconds. Sumi tried to force herself up, but her arms wouldn’t support her, and her feet slipped in the snow. She fell onto her stomach, groaning. 

Souta’s knee dropped in front of her, and she heard the click of his potion bottle. The world was getting darker, though, even with the lantern that still swung above her. That was nice, she decided. That was going to make it easier to go to sleep. 

A boot slammed into her teeth, forcing her fluttering eyes back open. 

“Don’t you fucking dare pass out!” Hikoshi yelled at her. 

“Get back to the wheel!” Souta shouted, bringing the bottle to Sumi’s lips. 

“As soon as I know she’s awake, I will.”

“Suiohamitight?” Sumi offered, accepting the offered bottle that was being pressed to her lips. She really had to stop waking up like this. 

“Fine, whatever,” Hikoshi threw her hands into the air. “I guess that counts. Let’s see if I can land this bitch of a ship.” Hikoshi pointed an accusatory finger at her as she stepped away. “I need all hands on deck, alright? Stay awake.”

Sumi told her arm to offer Hikoshi a salute, but it rebelliously left a layer of her skin adhered to the deck as soon as she lifted it. She sputtered into the drink, trying not to scream. Sumi glared at her arm. 

Bad arm. Don’t leave your skin lying around like that.

Hikoshi swore again, then stepped away to return to the wheel. Sumi only realized that the spinning in her head wasn’t from an injury when it suddenly stopped, the ship responding to Hikoshi’s commands. 

“Did you just tell your arm off?” Souta asked her. 

“DidjiI jusht say that ouloud?” She asked.

“Yeah, girl, you did. Did you hit your head, too?” He gently felt at the back of her helmet, trying to identify any dents.

“Donn think sho,” Sumi answered, “Think I just hurt too much to do much thinking good.”

Souta rolled his eyes, tilting the potion up so she could keep drinking. “Now you’re just playing it up.”

“Mmmmaybe,” She admitted between mouthfuls of sludgy green. 

A thud rocked the ship, more snow forcing itself inward through the gap in the hull. Hikoshi’s voice filtered in from the helm as she opened the roof trap door to the envelope and gas bags.

“We’re stopping here for now. I’ve got to get our buoyancy down so we don’t get blown away, then I’ll be back. I suggest you two find something warm to wear, and get something to cover up that window Souta busted.”

Sumi looked at the piles of snow that filled the room, and thought of spending more time somewhere cold enough for something like that to form. The coolness felt good on her arms right now, but she knew that wouldn’t last. 

She groaned, thumping her head against the deck. She’d finished the potion, and in a few minutes she’d be healthy enough to contribute. For the moment, though, she relished her ability to do nothing more than stare at the ceiling and think pessimistic thoughts. 

Chapter Text

When Sumi had suffered severe burns and lacerations to the majority of her body, followed by demonstrating several classic signs of concussion, she’d expected to get to sleep the rest of the night away to recover from her wounds. 

Clearly, expecting that level of empathy from her friends had been unrealistic. 

That was one of the problems with being a Hunter, she supposed. Everyone present knew that she would be perfectly fine in a matter of minutes, and so they expected her to act like it. Sumi thought that was rather rude of them. The least they could do was pretend to extend their sympathy past the early onset of mind-shattering agony. 

Souta had picked the spikes of wooden shrapnel out of her flesh while her wounds had steadily closed, not wanting to leave behind any foreign bodies for a cyst to form around. Infection was also a concern, but they hoped the topical infusion of boiling water would have helped stave that off, so he didn’t torture her with the sting of antiseptics. 

And now, ten minutes after she’d suffered wounds that would have taken most months to recover from, she was on her hands and knees on the deck. She had a rag in one hand, using the snow to try and scrub out her melted skin from between the grains of the wood. She’d left a long sheet of her arm there, disturbingly thick along its length. She hadn’t gotten a good look at herself immediately after the burn, but she was beginning to wonder if the wound had been survivable at all for a normal person. At the very least, it would have scarred her for life.

Souta had improvised a shovel by tying a broken plank to her shield, using it to shovel the snow back through the gash in the hull. They didn’t have anything to patch the hole with now, but the tightly pressed powder was better than nothing. According to Souta you could build an entire home out of packed snow, and you could even heat the inside. The snow would melt and form a sheet of ice that was practically airtight. 

At least, according to a book he’d read. He admitted that he’d never spent any time in freezing wastelands like this one before. 

And it was a wasteland, of that Sumi was certain. Before Hikoshi had pinned all the spare cloth they had to the broken window Sumi had gotten a glance outside. The top of the mountain was composed of two things only: ice and stone. There wasn’t so much as a flower poking through, no evidence of plant or animal life of any kind, and certainly not anything they could use to mend the wounded Stellar . Once the wind calmed they’d have to be flying out of here as-is.

Meanwhile, her own damned skin still wouldn’t come off the deck. The wood was too irregular, the melted flesh having soaked into it like mud. 

“Come on, you piece of shit…” Sumi muttered to herself. “You used to be a part of me. We worked together, remember that? Now get out there, already. You’re supposed to listen to me.”

Souta wrinkled his nose at her. “Are you talking to your arm skin?”

“I am giving it firm instructions, and it’s being very rude by not listening.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s dead, Sumi.”

“Aw, don’t say that, Souta,” She admonished, finally giving in and slipping her knife from her belt to scrape at it. “You’re gonna hurt its feelings.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

The skin peeled away from the deck with a sudden squelch, coming up on her knife in a single piece. 

“Ha!” She shouted, victorious. 

“Congrats. Now toss it outside.”

Sumi pouted her lip out, turning the knife towards Souta. The patch of skin jiggled on its tip. “C’mon, Souta. Can’t we keep it? I’ll treat it good, I promise.”

“If you don’t throw that out this second I’m going to dump snow down your shirt while you sleep.”

She snickered at him, heading towards the door to the ship. Yes, the door. The door that Souta could have used to dump the cargo instead of smashing the window, that door.

“Is this really what finally gets to you? We’ve collected dung samples, sorted through gut and intestinal contents, and ended up with more mud and blood on us than clothes, but a little bit of gore is what finally gets a reaction out of you?”

Souta stepped away from her as she passed him. “None of those things came from a person, though.”

“Most people would think that makes this one less gross, not more.” She slipped open the door for a second, inviting a blast of winter air to surge through the cabin. She flicked the flesh out onto the ice and slammed the door shut. 

Hikoshi took the moment that Sumi was in the helm to finally descend from above, having finished whatever she was doing up there. She’d donned her full aviator’s suit now, tough leather with a downy insulation beneath. Souta and Sumi had dressed up in their armor in an attempt to stay warm, but the padded metal was a far cry from Hikoshi’s proper outfit. 

“Alright,” Hikoshi dusted off her hands, surveying the ship. “We’re ready to wait out the storm. It looks like we’re sheltered by the lip of the mountain somewhat, so I don’t think we need to anchor ourselves. Kind’ve doubt there’s any soil for us to get purchase in, anyway.”

“From what I could see it was solid out there.”

“Well, we should still be fine, then. I’m heading to the bunkroom to get a fire going in the stove. It’s not going to heat the whole ship, but it’ll be better than nothing.”

“Aye-aye, cap’n.” Sumi saluted. 

Hikoshi scoffed. “You’ve been demoted, sorry to say. Passenger once more.”

“Oh, I know,” Sumi narrowed her eyes mischievously at Hikoshi. “I just like seeing your reaction every time I call you ‘captain’, captain.” 

Hikoshi pressed an open hand to Sumi’s breastplate, knocking her into the wall. She brought her face right down to Sumi’s, locking eyes with her head tilted ever so slightly to one side. The steam from their breaths mingled in the air between them. Sumi’s heart pounded while her eyes traced over Hikoshi’s scabbed-over gash and black eye, proof of the awful night they’d just survived. Hikoshi’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“We do not have enough privacy for this kind of behavior, Madame Hunter. Let’s go get warm.”

Sumi was too wired up to be cowed, though. They’d just nearly died, and Hikoshi was the only reason they weren’t smashed into pieces at the bottom of a cliff right now. 

“I’m plenty warm,” She whispered as quietly as possible, keenly aware of Souta’s presence on the other side of the wall. “Here. I’ll prove it.” 

Sumi leaned up into Hikoshi, tilting her head just so. Their lips met, cold at first, then blazingly hot as their faces flushed. Sumi pushed herself off the wall, pulling Hikoshi against her. 

There was a moment of awkwardness to it, Hikoshi caught by surprise, Sumi without any experience. That faded when Sumi felt Hikoshi’s eyelids flutter closed and they both leaned into their first true kiss. 

It was Hikoshi who finally broke them apart an indeterminate amount of time later. She pulled back suddenly, breathing heavily.

“Your armor is so cold! ” Hikoshi hissed at her, rubbing her hands along her body to try and work away the chill.

“Oh-- Oh, sorry,” Sumi whispered back, looking down at the metal that covered every inch of her from the neck down. With the padding and gambeson she wore underneath she’d forgotten that the steel surface must be utterly freezing. “And here I was, trying to warm you up.”

Hikoshi giggled, running a hand through her hair to straighten it. “It worked in a couple places, though.”

Sumi’s breath hitched, and she took a step forward before the scraping of Souta’s impromptu shovel behind her stopped her. She winced.

“We should put this on hold for now, shouldn’t we?”

Hikoshi made a sound of disappointment, but nodded her agreement. It was probably good that Souta was here, regardless. A snowstorm wasn’t the ideal locale for anything that involved removing layers of clothing. 

Sumi ruffled her own hair, returning it to its usual state of helmet-hair dishevelment. She didn’t know if Souta would be able to tell the difference between Hikoshi’s grip on the back of her head and her normal hair, but she didn’t want to take the risk.

Hikoshi followed her as they walked up to the curtain that divided the cargo room and helm. Sumi threw it open, preparing to walk through as nonchalantly as possible, but immediately bumped into Souta’s chest. 

He was standing up against the curtain, holding the shovel in one hand and lazily scraping it against the deck a few feet away from himself. All of the snow had been packed away a long time ago.

His grin was tremendous. He opened his mouth to begin talking, but Sumi’s hand shot up to his jaw to force it closed.

“Not. A. Word.”

“Mmmmhmm?” He mumbled inquisitively.

“Souta?” He looked down at her. “I mean it.”

His smile dropped slightly, mild disappointment registering in his face, but he nodded. Sumi let her hand fall and shoved her way past him, trying to swallow the blush that was creeping up her neck. She doubted that it worked. 

They commandeered some of the engine’s coal supply to toss in the cage beneath their stove, lighting it with a spark. Their spare clothes were hung from the doorframe or piled up beneath the curtain to hopefully trap as much heat as possible in the bunk room. Before then Sumi had been frustrated with their quarters’ small size, but it was a blessing in their current circumstances. Only a thin curtain could be pulled across the rear window, not even enough to fully block sunlight from entering the room, but it at least trapped some of the chill rolling off the glass from sneaking in. 

They debated between ripping the lodged trapdoor out of the roof and leaving it as is, one corner dangling into the room such that Souta and Hikoshi were in danger of accidentally banging their heads on it. They eventually decided not to, because the resulting gap would have let the stove’s heat escape up into the envelope. 

All of their spare blankets had been used to cover the busted window, so they curled up on the floor in front of the stove. They could have laid in their hammocks, but it was warmest next to the coal’s embers. Discomfort was a small price to pay when weighed against hypothermia. 

Between the room’s size and the new gaping hole in the floor, there wasn’t much room. Sumi and Hikoshi ended up wrapping around one side of the stove, Sumi’s head resting a few inches behind Hikoshi’s own. Souta slept down at her feet, curled up and using his arm as a pillow. 

Before Sumi had become a Hunter, sleeping like this likely would’ve been difficult to impossible. Now she’d grown accustomed to taking sleep where it could be found and not asking questions, and she knew Souta was much the same. Hikoshi herself was used to sleeping on the deck of a ship,s o this was barely a change of pace for her. As Sumi drifted off to sleep she chuckled at the idea of them being three of the most comfortable ship crash victims in history. 

Light was filtering through the curtain when Sumi awoke. The coal in the stove had burnt down to mere embers, glowing softly in front of her while leaving the air cool enough for her breath to frost. Sumi started to yawn, then choked on something in her mouth. 

She spat reflexively, sitting up before she realized that it was Hikoshi’s hair in her mouth. Judging by her sore throat, she’d slept with her mouth open, and the taller girl’s long hair had managed to stick itself to her tongue. Sumi spat again, trying to clear the last remnants of it from her tongue. It wasn’t the most pleasant way to begin the day. 

Her sputtering and spitting woke up the others, who blearily raised their heads off the floor with yawns of their own. 

“You gotta hairball or something?” Souta asked, rubbing his eyes.

“Something like that.” 

Hikoshi retrieved some coal for the stove, shivering as she opened the front of the cage. She tossed it in, where it landed with a satisfying burst of orange sparks and fiery pops. 

“So,” Sumi began, smacking her lips. “Sunlight’s behind the curtain. Who wants to bet on whether or not the wind’s calmed down enough for us to get out of here?” 

“If it’s not, I'm going back to sleep.” Souta stated. 

“As long as I can see I’m getting us out of here,” Hikoshi declared, stretching out. “I want to get this ship in for some repairs as soon as possible.”

“I thought we weren’t heading back?” Sumi asked. 

“Oh, no, there’s no way I’m limping back to the Guild because of a little bump and scrape. I just want us to land near a forest somewhere, get you two meatheads chopping lumber for me. It won’t be pretty, but we can at least patch up the hole so no one ends up falling to their death.”

“I wouldn’t die,” Souta offered unhelpfully. “If I have my armor on you can drop me from just about anywhere and I’ll make it. Horribly injured, probably, but I’m just saying.”

Hikoshi rolled her eyes. “Well I’m not dense enough to bounce like you, so the hole’s getting repaired regardless.”

“Would I survive a fall like that, too?” Sumi asked. Falling from the Listless hadn’t been fun in the slightest, so she couldn’t imagine falling ten times that distance.

“With your armor?” Souta eyed her. “No way. Your lining’s leather and cloth. Mine’s Paolumu down and barnos scales. You might get a little bit of distribution on impact, but not enough to keep your guts on the inside. I’d probably get a dozen yards of impact spread, like hitting a pile of pillows. If I land bad enough I might get the wind knocked out of me, but that’s about it.”

“So that’s two of us for the definitely-will-die category,” Hikoshi tallied up. “Which means we will absolutely be patching up the hole as soon as possible. In the meantime, Sumi, watch your step.”

“Noted.” 

Hikoshi clapped her hands together, trying to rub some warmth into her fingers. “Alright, grubworms. Everyone ready to get this ship off the ground?” 

“What are we going to do? Our first piloting test run didn’t exactly go great yesterday, you know.” 

Hikoshi scratched at the scabbed over cut on her cheekbone, which underscored her dark and swollen left eye. “I recall that, as a matter of fact. No, you two will have the very important job of standing at different ends of the ship to scream at me if anything starts to break. That was a bad bump last night, and we don’t know how the ship will respond to taking off again.”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” Souta replied lazily, giving Hikoshi a sloppy salute as he headed towards the front. 

Sumi smirked. “Aye-aye, Cap--”

“Shut it.” 

“Understood, Cap--”

Hikoshi grabbed Sumi by the collar of her armor, yanking her close. Sumi let herself be pulled, wearing a shit-eating grin the entire time. Hikoshi leaned in, bringing her lips past Sumi’s face, right up against her ear.

“Souta has got to find something to do on his own when we land, understood?”

Sumi rose up on her tiptoes, whispering into Hikoshi’s own ear. 

“Yes ma’am, Captain. ” 

Hikoshi sported a furious blush as she shoved her away, though this time Sumi didn’t let herself be moved. Instead Hikoshi just drove herself backward into the cargo room, spinning to awkwardly turn the motion into stalking toward the helm. Sumi laughed the entire time. 

Once Hikoshi had climbed up into the envelope Sumi and Souta began a best-of-three game of rock-paper-scissors to determine who would brave the outside to clear the windows. Sumi won, to her great relief, so it was Souta who had to sprint into the thigh-high snow to run his hands along the glass windows. Sumi lit the lantern hanging from the ceiling in the meantime, trying to squeeze any amount of heat possible into the room. 

Thankfully, Sumi could see when she looked up into the envelope, the sunlight was filtering through the thin leather sheets that made up the envelope. It was still dark, but at least Hikoshi wasn’t navigating by feel alone like she had been last night. Sumi really ought to apologize for that gash on her face, sometime. It looked likely to scar. 

Souta returned to the cabin a moment later, shaking snow off himself like a wet dog. 

“You owe me one,” He declared while pointing at her accusingly. 

“I won that game fair and square.”

“Don’t care. You get to do it next time.”

“Then that’s another reason to make sure we never go anywhere this cold again.”

“I’m going to get us reassigned to a polar colony after this expedition just to get even.”

“I think you’d lose just as much as I do in that scenario, Souta.”

“I don’t care, as long as I drag you down with me.”

“Wow. You know, you have such an excellent attitude for a teacher. Ever thought about opening a school?”

“I’ll pass. If every student was like you I’d just be torturing myself.”

“I think you’d be surprised when most of the students were worse than me, honestly. When you cut out the snark I’m a model pupil.”

“Can I get an ETA on the cutting off of the snark, then?”

“No.”

Hisses sounded from above as Hikoshi began adjusting gas bags, lightening the Stellar . It wasn’t long before the ship began to pull itself out of the snowbank that the wind had built around it, what with the missing supplies and missing pieces of the hull no longer burdening it. When the ship caught the wind and began to inch forward, Hikoshi dropped down from above. 

She took to the wheel, beginning the process of navigating between the mountain peaks. The small dip that they’d chosen as their crossing path was fairly flat, easy to navigate. It was less than a mile before the ground began to fall away from them, the first of the uncharted territory coming into view. 

The mountains rolled downward much more gradually on this side, a gentle slope that was crisscrossed by snowmelt streams. In the far distance Sumi could see where the streams began to be obscured by a thickening pelt of greenery, taller trees replacing the sparse shrubland that dominated the mountainside. 

It was a beautiful sight. They were low enough to the ground still that she could see herds of goat-like creatures winding their way through the hills, distinguished by the way their horns curved up and away from their heads. They were more like bulls than the stubby livestock she’d known from home, both in their horns and their body size. Recalling just how hard the waist-high goats she was familiar with could headbutt, she resolved herself to never find out what their spiky buff cousins would hit like. 

Hikoshi spun the wheel gently, tilting the tail fin to keep them skimming fairly low above the terrain while they drifted downward. The engine still didn’t work, but Hikoshi hadn’t expected to have it anyway. Surfing the currents like this was exactly what she was most used to, and Sumi could see it in the way she held herself. Hikoshi’s shoulders were loose, a gentle look on her eyes. She tapped the wheel with her fingertips to make the smallest of adjustments, a gently whistled tune filling the helm. Sumi smiled and sat in her chair, content to enjoy both of the views in silence. 

Chapter Text

Hikoshi had called the lands beyond the mountain a jungle, but that had only been an assumption based off of the habitat information the Hunter’s Guild had provided them. Sumi could see that the reality was something different, and it was a kind of forest she’d never really seen before.

Trees spread their branches in squat, wide formations, shading as much of the ground beneath them as the Stellar . Practically nothing grew underneath them, she determined with Souta’s spyglass. The roots they spread were so thick near the base that they replaced the dirt entirely, and it was clear from the barren land surrounding them that they had fought to earn a monopoly on the soil’s nutrients. Their canopies were symmetrical, a near perfect circle with a diameter of forty or even fifty feet. The forest slowly became denser as Hikoshi guided the Stellar through the gentle mountain-fed air currents, until free space to land started to become harder to come by. 

They set the ship down in one of the last open spaces, a conspicuous gap in the coverage where Sumi could only assume a tree had recently died. 

The Stellar had lost her anchor spikes when the wind had snapped the lines the night prior, leaving them with only their docking ropes to secure the ship. Hikoshi grumbled the entire way down about how poor of a practice it was to let the hull take so much of the weight of the ship, but they had no other option. Hikoshi let the ship glide into the clearing while Sumi and Souta gathered up lengths of rope and prepared to secure it.

Sotua lept clear before the ship even touched ground, swinging the last ten feet from the rope he’d wrapped around his shoulder. He took off at a run to the nearest tree, while Sumi more patiently waited for the ship to land. 

She stepped out as soon as she felt the hull bump against the ground, rounding the ship to retrieve her own line that was stored on the exterior of the ship. She quickly unspooled it as she ran to the nearest tree, fifty feet away or so. Looping the rope around its trunk and tying the knot took next to no time, the repetitive practice she’d used to entertain herself on the trip here proving well worth it.

Hikoshi stepped out of the ship once they’d secured at least two ropes, helping them tie more on. They didn’t expect a storm to hit them here, as the skies were nearly cloudless, but they hadn’t expected one in a desert either. They eventually tied six of the ship’s thick docking ropes to the trees surrounding the clearing, giving the Stellar the appearance of a spider perched in the center of its web. It was almost certainly overkill, but they weren’t taking any chances. 

The sun was just before its apex when they began taking inventory of their supplies, turning the clearing into a makeshift camp. Souta set tripwires tied to bells around the edges of the clearing, to alert them to any approaching creatures, while Hikoshi began examining the ship’s damage and jotting down what they’d need to patch it. 

Sumi, meanwhile, finally stopped procrastinating on something she should have done a long time ago. She retrieved the Apceros shell pieces from her personal trunk, preparing to attach them to her armor. 

I really wish the author had remembered to do this back while I was in Narrowstraight , she thought to herself. According to their outline that's where I was supposed to do it, and it was the whole point of introducing the smithing characters, but they totally forgot. Now I have to do this out in the field, which is going to suck. It’s a good thing I remembered to bring these completely innocuous strips of thin sheet metal that I never mentioned before, otherwise this whole sequence wouldn’t make any sense. I hope they fix it when they do the re-write after the fic is finished. But wait, they really liked that joke about my armor being cold on Hikoshi. How’re they going to keep that one around? Sumi shrugged to herself, approximately the 780th time that she’d done it so far in this story. Eh, that’s their problem, not mine. 

Building a small furnace in the dirt was something she’d done a hundred times before with her father, and the fact that they were in uncharted territory wasn’t going to make it any more difficult. She had coal from the ship, and her knife let her carve a long strip of wood from a nearby tree to serve as a shovel. 

All she had to do was dig a small pit, about a foot or so deep, and connect it by a tunnel to a second hole where she’d place a fan. Spinning the fan would act as the bellows for the coals, and placing a cap on the coal pit would allow it to heat up to the temperatures required. She didn’t need to melt the iron bands, just heat them enough to bend easily. 

The cap on the coal pit was the hardest thing to get, because she didn’t have the free time to shape a clay lid. She eventually cajoled Souta into letting her use his Rathalos-carapace breastplate, something that wouldn’t notice the heat in the slightest. She pressed it into the dirt bottom-first, so that the fan tunnel would blow upward through the waist while she could insert more coal and iron sheets into the neck. 

She began to reconsider the idea when she watched flames flutter upward from where Souta’s head belonged, the sight grimly reminiscent of what would happen to either of them if they got caught in a Monster’s flames. She shook the macabre image off, preparing the metal sheets. 

Souta, when he’d been frantically tossing their supplies off the airship, had designated her smithing tools ‘inessential’. Had she seen him do it she would have vehemently disagreed, but the damage had already been done. Now she used a pair of cooking tongs to slip the metal sheet into the furnace with only her gauntlets to protect her from the forge’s heat. The metal slipped halfway in, cherry red creeping up its length. 

Sumi arranged the apceros shell onto her armor while the steel heated, finding the best arrangement for it. Its curve was fortuitously similar to her original armor’s angle, which saved her from needing to deform the chestpiece to accommodate the new shell. When she was happy with its placement she wrapped twine around the pieces, keeping them steady. 

She flipped the piece of sheet metal in the forge, heating the other side. It would have been better if she’d had a true forge, where she could lay the piece down in the coals to heat it along its length evenly, but this should still work. 

Sumi called Souta over when the majority of the metal had been brought to a glow. Without her tools she regretfully had to rely on his armor once more, since his Rathalos gauntlets would be too large on her hands. Unlike her simpler armor the palms of his gloves were covered with articulated scales, hooked into a piece of extraordinarily tough leather. He could pick up the piece of metal without a second thought, temperature no different to him than a piece of ice. 

She instructed him in slipping it through the arm-holes of her armor, then bending it across the top of the apceros shell. With no way to actually adhere the shell to the armor this had been the best methodology she could develop. Form-fitting multiple bands of metal at different angles, then allowing them to cool, would mechanically hold the shell in place on the armor. It was far from a graceful solution, adding more weight than she would have preferred and throwing off the balance of the chestpiece, but it was still better than dying to a puncture wound through the chest. 

Souta fit the first band without significant issue, though it wasn’t as tight on the inside as she would have liked. She had to carefully slip her arm into the interior, using the pommel of her sword as a hammer to fit it to the armor. 

By the time that they’d finished the first band, the second was done heating. They repeated the process three more times while the sun slid by overhead.

The end result was her first true piece of Hunter’s armor. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t ergonomic, but it was effective. Souta loosed a single test arrow from his bow at it, standing no more than five feet away. Instead of blowing through the front and back, as it would have done to the steel, the wooden shaft of the arrow shattered. Sumi lept in excitement while Souta mourned the unexpected loss of his arrow. 

The dual crosses of metal on her chest were technically weak points, easier than the shell to damage, but the majority of attacks she could expect from Monsters were blunt blows of pure force. She would still have to make sure any teeth or claws were blocked by her shield, lest the shell end up ripped from its place on her armor. 

The two smaller fragments of apceros shell she placed as shoulder pads, tying them into place with multiple bands of leather. Protecting her head and neck were already a priority, so she shouldn’t be taking many blows there. The fact that they’d likely be torn off by the first hit served as more incentive to avoid taking shots to the area. 

With her armor sorted and Souta’s finally cool enough for him to slip back on, she rejoined the efforts to set up a camp. The dirt of the clearing was silty, almost sand-like, but had sparse dry grass covering most of its surface. She would have preferred to set up stakes or a palisade, since they’d likely be spending the night here, but the soil wasn’t a good fit for it. Even if it had been, their first priority for any lumber was mending the Stellar’s wounds, so it was a moot point. 

“Hey, Souta?” Sumi called.

“What’s up?”

Sumi pulled her sword from its scabbard, tossing it to him hilt-first. “I’m going to work with Hikoshi to see what we can figure out about repairing the engine. Go get us some wood while we do that.”

He caught the sword and looked down at it dubiously. “Sure you want to be left alone without a weapon?”

“You can’t chop logs with an arrow and I don’t need a sword to read schematics. Besides, I’ve still got my shield and knife. I’ll be fine as long as no true Monsters show up.”

“And if one does?”

“That’d suck. Stay close enough to hear us screaming, I guess.”

He rolled his eyes, but turned to head out of the clearing. “You’re way too casual about your own life, Sumi.”

“What can I say? I’ve had a lot of bad examples.”

Souta snorted as he stepped over the tripwire at the edge of the clearing, disappearing into the shadowy forest. His unconscious ability to blend into his surroundings always disturbed her slightly. She wondered if she’d eventually be doing the same thing without realizing it. 

Hikoshi stood up from where she’d been sorting through a pile of supplies, surveying the engine. 

“You really think we can fix it?”

“Probably,” Sumi replied without interest, walking up behind Hikoshi while slipping her chest piece over her head and dropping to the side. “But I doubt we’re going to get much done before Souta gets back.”

Hikoshi turned around and caught Sumi hopping awkwardly on one leg, pulling her left greave off. She watched Sumi switch legs, hopping in place while trying to shuck off her other greave. Hikoshi chuckled. 

“You want some help with that?”

Sumi only nodded, inviting Hikoshi over. Her hands crawled over Sumi, deft fingers dancing across her armor to unravel the knots that tied it in place. Her breath stuttered in her chest, and she had time only for one last glance over her shoulder to ensure Souta was gone before her focus was forcibly taken elsewhere. 

Souta

He’d be damned if he was going to be staying near enough to the ship for him to hear anything, even if it was the pair of them screaming for help. Souta took off at a straight line from the ship and didn’t deviate for a very long while, marking the trees he passed with small cuts to lead himself back.

The forest beyond the mountains was odd in a way he’d never encountered before. It had the feel of an orchard, the trees so evenly spaced and respectful of the order of things that he wondered if it was truly natural. At times the trunks seemed to fall into neat rows, a grid of oval canopies. But despite his suspicions, the theory of it being cultivated didn’t add up. 

The trees had no sign of bearing fruit, only a small nut that was, after a taste test, confirmed to be inedible. Their shade was convenient, he supposed, but no one would cover hundreds of square miles with trees like this just for a break from the sun. Though, he considered, the way they choked any competing life out of the soil was novel. It would make for quite a convenient way to maintain a pathway through a forest. He wondered if this was the artifact of some ancient society’s road system run amok, the trees that had kept the roads clear having spread outward like a plague in their tender’s absence. 

That was inherently unprovable, he knew, but he jotted the thought down for later. He’d already decided that he personally believed the theory, if only because it made the world a slightly more interesting place to live in. That was one of his most common justifications.

One of the trees eventually broke the pattern, its branches not quite intermingling with its fellows. Shafts of light slipped in through the canopy’s gaps, allowing a thin ring of hardy mushrooms and weeds to sprout up around the isolated trunk. He pulled his flora journal from his hip pocket and sat down on a rising root, sketching the break in the pattern. 

Souta knew he technically should have been documenting the most common, obvious examples, as they made up the bulk of the environment, but he’d long since accepted his romantic tendencies. Anyone studying his notes could understand the concept of long semi-rows of trees, but he’d always lacked the vocabulary to describe the exceptional. Things like the tree in front of him were why he’d spent so long sketching, why his notebook was his most constant companion when he wasn’t in the field. 

The trunk of the tree was pressed firmly into his paper, a slat of wood slipped between the pages to prevent the imprint from pressing itself on the next sheet. The tangled branches he chose to represent with a light rubbing of one of his duller pieces of charcoal, only occasionally refining the lines to represent the more distinct of the tangled branches. He began the ring of weeds and mushrooms on the far side of the tree, little more than dashes of jagged lines. As his work rounded itself closer to the viewer he added more detail, curving the stalks of dandelions and adding bulbous caps to the mushrooms. 

When he began to close the circle at its closest approach to the viewer he spent more time on each plant, rendering each one in loving detail. They were oversized in comparison to what he actually saw before him, but that was necessary to ensure any future viewer could identify the species present if need be. Later, when he was back on the ship, he would clinically describe their dimensions and coloration. For now he settled with slipping the wooden slat a page to the left, to help prevent the charcoal from smearing. It still would, a little bit, but he accounted for that in his linework. Often he was happier with the image after it had settled into the page some than he was immediately after finishing.

Souta slipped his flora book back into its place, stretching while he stood from his root seat. He began to vaguely wander back towards the ship, having given Sumi and Hikoshi over an hour to work on the ‘engine’. He was careful to keep the line of marked trees in sight, but his path now was far more meandering. He lept over a small creek that he hadn’t noticed before, one of the rare aberrations in the otherwise monotonous hills. He spent a little time there, inspecting the small crustaceans that gathered where the water pooled. It seemed they preyed upon smaller bugs and creatures that were pulled along by the current, nipping out of their calm eddies with nimble claws to snag a meal as prey floated past. 

He couldn’t follow the stream for long before his guide trees were too distant to easily spot. He considered following it regardless, knowing he could backtrack along its course to find his way, but his hard-earned sense of caution won out. He returned to his marked path, whistling while he strolled back to the ship, mildly disappointed at his investigation being cut short. 

Until something rustled the branches above. It wasn’t the wind, because he felt nothing on the exposed back of his neck. Souta kept his pace even, but slowly craned his head up and behind himself. 

A form was flitting along the treetops, indistinct through the thick branches. It was long, nearly serpentine, but he could see grasping legs gripping the branches to push the body forward. Those six legs were tipped with a pair of circular claws each, interlocking talons that gripped branches of various sizes with ease. It was perhaps forty feet long, with a body some eight feet wide, but the branches hardly dipped under its weight. 

It crossed the valley formed by the meeting edges of the trees by leaping forward, gliding along the gap slowly enough to call to his mind the image of a Paolumu, a Monster with reserves of gas that let it float like a balloon. The thinner trees let him catch a better glance at its form, which only increased the comparison in his mind’s eye. 

Its body was a dirty white, matching the ashen composition of the forest tree trunks. Pustules of thin pink skin inflated along its entire length in procession, each as large as a man. He heard small clicks as each bubble fully deflated, then a whistle when it began to fill again. It seemed those air sacs were what allowed it to float the way it did. The woodwind whistles and percussion clicked lent a whimsical air to its traversal, almost musical in nature.

Souta watched, entranced, following as closely as he dared. He could only see parts of it clearly on occasion, so he never let it out of his sight. Hopefully he would be able to see its whole body in brief flashes, enough that he could sketch it accurately later. He caught a glimpse of its head only once, but it was a sight he knew he wouldn’t forget. 

Its snout was conical, extending outward from an arched brow under which its eyes were set, giving it an excellent view of the terrain beneath it. Whiskers grew along the midline of its head, longest at the tip and shortest at the cheeks. The tips of the hairs were perfectly in line, a flat plane despite originating from different heights. 

Souta fumbled for his spyglass without taking an eye off of it, smoothing his steps to give himself a steady view when he put it to his eye. When the canopy next thinned he could see its skin in greater detail, seeing that its coloration came not from hide but a coating of feathers. It was avian in origin, even if it lacked wings that would have led him to believe such. He couldn’t see above it, he reminded himself. Perhaps there were some vestigial examples of its hereditary history there. He’d have to keep an eye out for another one when they set sail again, to catch a glance of its spine. 

He was so taken up in his observations of the strange Monster that he neglected to realize its path had been following the markings he’d made in the trees, a direct line back to the Stellar . It only became apparent when the clearing became visible in his peripheral vision, now only a few hundred feet away. It was heading to the Stellar. That couldn't be good. Souta tore himself away from his observations, a long-engrained calculus running through his mind. 

Could he beat it? Likely, as the inflating sacs had thin skin and seemed easy enough to puncture with an arrow. 

Could he outrun it? Almost certainly not. It hadn’t demonstrated any kind of impressive speed yet, but it moved as if it weighed next to nothing and had six limbs to pull itself along the canopy. 

And finally, what could he do that it couldn’t? It could clearly walk and probably could fly, but how well would it do forcing itself through the branches? If its constitution was as delicate as it appeared he imagined it wouldn’t enjoy breaking through the forest to reach him, but he couldn’t be sure of that. 

With what he knew now neatly summarized in his mind, Souta elected to break into a sprint. He shot out from his hiding place behind a tree, throwing up clouds of silty dust as he beelined for the Stellar. He could only hope Sumi and Hikoshi weren’t still busy. 

The Monster let out a shrill hiss, the sound of a dozen feral cats being surprised by a pack of hounds. He didn’t turn to see what it was doing, keeping his head low and his arms pumping. 

Sunlight beat down on him a moment later as he entered the clearing, seeing Sumi and Hikoshi observing the bent rod that connected the propeller. He swore to himself when he saw Sumi out of her armor, pieces of it scattered in a loose trail leading to the ship. 

Teenagers! I can’t believe I survived being a Hunter as a teenager.

At least she still had her shield on her back. He shouted at them, pointing behind himself. 

“Unknown Monster coming in hot! Forty feet long, airborne capable, probable armor gaps along the lateral midline! Hikoshi, get in the ship before it--” 

Hikoshi gasped when she turned around, looking at something over his shoulder. Souta swore again, spinning around to jog backward while yanking his bow off his back. 

The Monster was at the edge of the clearing, rising upward so that only its last pair of legs was grasping the tree branches. Its cobra-esque stance was complemented by the level gaze of its head, its downward facing eyes positioned well enough to see them without bending its neck. 

Souta nocked an arrow to his bow, selecting a thinner shaft for range. He was about to draw and loose the shot when he realized the creature had stopped, surveying them from the edge of the clearing. 

He heard the door to the airship slam shut behind him, signaling the fact that Hikoshi was out of the way. Sumi’s footsteps sounded a half-beat later. She appeared in front of him after a moment, raising her shield to put it between them and the Monster. Without any armor aside from her helmet the protective formation was pointless, but he didn’t correct her. It was good that she was used to working in a team. She reached back with her left hand for her sword, which he handed to her silently. 

The Monster continued to evaluate them, swaying slightly in the wind. The treetop bent under its weight, more obvious when it was standing on only two legs. Souta noted with surprise that the inflating and deflating of its lateral air sacs had ceased, the pale skin pulled tight as a drum. 

“It’s not attacking,” Sumi whispered helpfully.

“Yeah, I noticed that. Wonder what its game plan is.”

“If it’s ‘stand ominously in place’ I’d say it’s doing a great job so far. Thing’s creepy.”

“But beautiful.”

“Every Monster I’ve seen is. It’s just that this one’s also creepy.”

They stayed in silence for a while longer, neither party in the standoff so much as twitching. The creature’s eyes occasionally flicked from the Stellar to them, or to glance behind itself, but its body was moved only by the breeze. 

After a while the Monster began to shiver slightly. Souta tensed, pulling on his bow string, but the Monster didn’t come forward. The shiver grew for a few seconds, now a full-body shudder, until suddenly all of the air sacs along its sides inflated at once. 

The rush of air being taken in was audible, setting the leaves of the tree around it fluttering. The creature didn’t open its mouth to do it, though, and by the movement of the greenery it seemed the air was actually being inhaled by the sacs themselves. The sacs reached their greatest expanse with a series of clicks, then began to whistle while they deflated. Souta and Sumi held their positions. 

Their continued stillness seemed to mean something to the creature. Its gaze became less intense, shifting around the clearing more calmly. It slowly lowered itself, grasping the tree with its other pairs of legs. It didn’t quite look away from them, but it no longer seemed as on-edge. 

Souta didn’t drop his weapon. Any Monsters was unpredictable, especially one he’d never seen before. He was proud to see Sumi doing the same, just as ready as she had been when it had looked poised to attack. 

The creature slowly bent down, first loosing its front legs, and then its middle pair, gently lowering itself to the ground. Souta expected it to make its way towards them as it continued to slither onto the dirt, but it did no such thing. He watched its back carefully while it moved, and saw no signs of wings. 

The Monster eventually stopped, fully on the ground. It kept one eye facing them as it turned towards the trunk of the tree it had been standing on, its tail creeping around it. The creature kept them in sight while it slowly wrapped itself onto the tree, embracing it in the same way a snake would wrap its prey.

Eventually only its head remained on the ground, the rest of its body having worked itself up the trunk. With the direct comparison to draw upon Souta could tell that its feathers were colored almost exactly the same as the trees, indistinguishable in shade if he blurred his vision. The head turned to face them, both eyes now evaluating them directly. 

This seemed a pivotal moment for the Monster. Its pink eyes were cold and calculating, considering them. Souta decided to take a risk and slowly lowered his bow. He let the arrow fall away from the string, but he kept it in his hands just in case. Sumi glanced behind herself and took his cue. She straightened, crossing her arms so her sword would be hidden behind her shield. 

With that the Monster’s head pulled away from the ground, curling up to reach the top of the trunk with the rest of its body. Souta heard the whistle-clicks of its air sacs inflating again, though the ones that he could see remained taut. The Monster’s head twisted as it came to rest, turning upside down to face the sky. Its eyelids slowly lowered, the whistle-clicks of its air sacs slowing, though its eyes never closed completely. A thin anteater-esque tongue flicked out of its mouth, flitting over its snout to groom its feathers. 

Souta sighed, placing his arrow back in its quiver. Sumi gave him a doubtful glance, but he gestured at her for her to sheathe her sword. She did so reluctantly, but kept her shield fitted to her arm. 

They walked slowly back towards the ship, keeping as careful an eye on the Monster as it did them. Sumi gently unlatched the door and stepped inside, followed a moment later by Souta. He shut the door softly, breathing a sigh of relief. He really hadn’t wanted to fight some unknown creature so close to their only means of transportation. 

Hikoshi was waiting by a window, eyes alight with excitement. She rushed over to them as soon as they’d entered. 

“What in the world is that thing?” She demanded of Sumi, taking her by the shoulders. 

“No idea. Souta?”

“Nothing I’ve seen before. Looks like it didn’t take us long to make a discovery on this trip.”

“It’s completely new?” Hikoshi asked. 

“Probably. We’re not the first Hunters to come out here, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some dusty record of it somewhere, but we’re the first to have seen it in recent times at the very least.”

“Okay, I know you two probably have a lot of Hunter stuff to talk about,” Hikoshi began, never a good start for a topic that anyone was hoping to be over soon, “But does that mean we get to name it?” 

Sumi’s eyes widened at the question while Souta laughed. She looked at him earnestly, and he knew that there was only one thing that they’d be talking about for a while. 

“Yes, I guess we get to. It may not stick if there’s already a name for it somewhere, but we’re allowed to call it whatever we want in the meantime. And for the record, my first suggestion’s Balloon Snake.” 

Hikoshi gave him a disgusted look. “That’s not even a name, that’s just a bad description.”

Sumi jumped in to explain for him. “It’s basically impossible to come up with a name for a Monster right away. Most of the ones we’re familiar with already had a name, ones the locals gave them forever ago, but it’s different for new ones. You can’t just, like, smash a bunch of sounds together and see if it’s got the right vibe.” Sumi leaned into Hikoshi’s side, affecting a stage whisper. “Even if that’s definitely how Souta wants to do it.” 

Souta put on his most innocent expression. “All I’m saying is that it’d make the whole process a lot easier.”

Sumi continued on. “You have to find a few words that describe it, then translate it into a dead language. If you name it something in our language the meaning of its name might change over time, which confuses people. That said, my first suggestion is Cloud Serpent.”

“It’s not a serpent, though,” Souta pointed out. “It’s got feathers.”

“It sure looks like one.”

Hikoshi turned to Sumi with a baffled look. “Then you’ve seen some really weird looking snakes, I guess. I say Hissing Cloud.”

“Bubble Pole.” 

“You suck at naming things, Souta.” 

“I got the ship right, didn’t I?” 

“Congrats, you’ve got one good one out of like thirty. Living Blimp.”

“I really doubt any dead languages have a word for blimp.”

The conversation continued on like that for a solid half hour, all of them standing by the windows to watch the creature through the starboard windows of the Stellar . After enough rejections Souta gave up entirely, stealing Sumi’s seat to begin sketching out his impression of the not-yet-named Monster. He did these on scrap paper, wanting a few attempts to figure out its unfamiliar proportions before settling on a final one that would go in his journal. 

Eventually they all gave up on a name, tabling the discussion for later. Some of the stronger suggestions ended up sounding ridiculous when Souta brought out his melodramatically-named ‘Dictionary for the Dead’, so they agreed to turn to other matters. 

They eventually returned to their work on the ship, keeping mostly to the far side of the Stellar . Souta went and properly gathered lumber, climbing the trees to cut off the straightest pieces he could find. The bark was stripped easily enough by his knife, and Sumi was quick to begin whittling it into shape under Hikoshi’s careful direction. 

The Monster watched them the entire time they worked. It seemed nearly asleep, but never fully unconscious. 

He hadn’t seen it blink once. 

It rested, wrapped around the tree. It continued to breathe with only the air sacs facing the trunk, implying that it knew of their vulnerability, and that when not inflated they were more resilient. Souta filed that thought away for later, in case the situation turned more violent. 

The work on the Stellar was carried out as quietly as possible to avoid disturbing the creature’s rest. Sumi and Souta had a brief discussion, evaluating it at a distance, and were fairly certain they could hold their own against it. But with no value in the fight they maintained the fragile truce. 

Night eventually fell, the Stellar still lacking. Finding wood long enough and sturdy enough to mend the jagged gash was difficult, and finding ways to adhere it to the ship was even more troublesome. Hikoshi assured them they’d have the work finished by the next day, but they couldn’t continue it at night. 

The Monster, meanwhile, seemed content to stay on its tree. It kept its head flipped upside down and eyes only partially closed, even when darkness fell. Souta could only wonder what it was looking for.

Chapter Text

It was a few hours after sunrise the next day when Sumi noticed the Monster beginning to act erratically. Its head languidly rotated to face the ground once more, no urgency apparent. The sounds of its breathing had been a constant companion through the night, quickly becoming familiar. All three of them perked their heads up when the creature’s whistling hastened slightly, its sinuous form sliding across the bark. 

The creature shifted its length up and down the tree, the motion reminiscent of a cat using a scratching post. Well, if the cat had been capable of wrapping itself around the post like coiled rope, it would have. Its eyes watched them closely as it moved, pink irises constricting in suspicion. They made no move to acknowledge its change in behavior, continuing about their work as they had for the last several hours. It was the reaction they’d decided during the previous night’s discussion, reasoning that anything the creature was comfortable with was something they should continue to do should it begin to act strangely.

Seemingly content with their non-reaction, the creature tightened around the tree. The air sacs that had been facing them began to expand, more audible than before without the wood to muffle them. The Monster clung closer to the trunk, constricting around it with such force that Sumi could hear bark snap and rip as it scraped its feathered hide along the ashen surface. It repeated the motion, gyrating over and over. Chips of wood fell to the forest floor, forming a small pile beneath the creature.

After a few minutes of this, Sumi watching the process carefully out of the corner of her eye, the creature began to roll. It spun about itself without unraveling itself from the tree, an odd display that didn’t look quite possible to her eye. If it had been a more normal creature it would have been upside down, but its head flipped sides easily. It seemed to Sumi that the coat of feathers which were now exposed to them, having been thoroughly abraded against the bark, were a brighter shade than the side which had faced the open air. The difference was subtle enough for her to doubt herself, but she would be sure to bring it up with Souta later. Did this grinding serve to camouflage the creature for its environment? If the feathers accepted coloration easily, maybe every example of the species could be a unique shade. 

Only when its other side had been equally sanded against the treebark did the Monster begin to slither towards the ground, shaking along its length to spray woodchips from its feathers. Sumi’s breath caught as it turned to them once more, now with all six legs on the ground. 

Its eyes slid from Sumi, to Souta, then to Hikoshi, and finally to the Stellar . Its nose sniffed the air delicately, thin tongue flicking out to groom the whiskers that had been disheveled in the night. 

It took a step towards them. Sumi took a step back. 

The creature paused, tufts of feathers flicking about where she thought its ears to be. 

The creature returned its foot, and Sumi let out her breath. 

Its head cocked,  focusing on her. After a prolonged period of their eyes meeting, the Monster turned away. It pushed off the ground, ponderously sailing upward in an arc that seemed too slow to be possible, yet clearly was. Its feet alighted gently atop the treetop, grasping the branches with ease. 

Its whistling breaths began properly, both sides engaged in the rhythm. The creature pulled itself along the treetops with all the effort of a child floating through water, calmly shimmering out of their view. 

Sumi’s shoulders relaxed from tension she hadn’t known she was holding. The ethereal creature had been fascinating, delightful to witness, but it was an unknown. Hunters didn’t do well with unknown variables, not when lives were on the line. 

The three of them immediately broke away from their work, convening in an excited huddle. They discussed their impressions of the thing openly, something they hadn’t done quite yet for some reason, as if it would have understood them talking about it. Hikoshi surprised Sumi by being the most enthusiastic of all of them, her sparkling expression utterly captivated by the creature that they’d spent the last day quietly observing. 

She kept asking Souta how it floated through the air like it had, as if he would have any answers after a few scant hours observing it. Sumi and Souta decided it was improbable that it was using hydrogen like Paolumus did, because its comparatively small air sacs couldn’t sustain its weightlessness. They couldn’t rule out an internal reservoir, which made some sense when they considered that its apparent weight never changed, but there was also nothing to support the idea. If they could Hunt one someday many of their immediate questions would be answered, but it would be idiotic to take the risk on a Monster whose capabilities were entirely unknown. 

Hikoshi eventually accepted that she wasn’t going to learn anything more of how the creature moved, demanding the consolation prize that Souta and Sumi hand over any of their books on flying Monsters. Hikoshi seemed determined to learn more about the flight of Monsters after the nigh-disastrous mountain crossing. It was the first time that Sumi had seen her passion roused for anything outside of a map or ship. 

She rubbed at a bruise on her clavicle, reconsidering. She supposed that the mechanics of flying Monsters was the fourth thing Hikoshi had demonstrated passion for. 

The floating Monster had left a pile of detritus around its perch, nearly all of the bark from the trunk having been ground into powder or stripped from the wood. The meat of the tree underneath was pale like the bark, but of a darker shade. 

“Think it’s gone for good?” Sumi asked. Souta nodded without conviction.

“There was no sign of a nest here before we landed, and I doubt it’s the type that has a regular place to bed down every night. We should be out of here before nightfall either way, so it won’t be a problem.”

They approached the abandoned tree as a group, inspecting the Monster’s leavings. The force it had exerted on the wood had been extraordinary, turning much of the bark into a fine powder that dusted the ground beside a smattering of feathers. Their feet kicked up a small cloud, irritating a sneeze out of Hikoshi. 

Sumi crouched down, pinching a feather between two gauntleted fingers. It was too rigid to be from anything but a Monster, its six inch oval length not fluttering in the wind at all. She ran the feather against an exposed piece of leather on her armor, testing if its edge was sharp. The leather was unmarred, so she slipped her gauntlets off to feel the texture herself.

She could bend the feather’s rachis when she gripped it between both hands, though her arms shook with the effort required. Its vanes were stiff as a comb, an observation that prompted her to try to run it through her hair. It tangled immediately, of course, too dense to use as a brush. She had to yank it painfully from her hair, earning a snicker from Hikoshi. She spun the feather around in her fingers, feeling the odd way it caught the air. 

Sumi poked at the calamus, feeling it out. The tip of it felt more fragile than the rest of the feathers, so she pressed her fingernail into it. It shattered under the pressure, popping open like a wine cork. A second later, the vanes on the side of the feather began to flutter in the wind, and the entire thing became noticeably heavier in her hand. She raised an eyebrow, calling Souta over. 

Hikoshi’s attention began to wander despite her newfound interest in Monsters when Sumi and Souta brought out their journals, carefully collecting feather samples and crushing their ends. They recorded the results in their notebooks, then took to testing the rest of the feathers to see if breaking other pieces of them reproduced the effect. Cutting the vanes with their knives did nothing, and snapping the other end of the feather had little effect. It seemed that it only lost its weightlessness when the hollow rachis was broken and exposed to the open air, though why exactly that was the case they had no idea. It was a permanent change, they determined, because cleanly cutting and resealing the feather didn’t restore its properties. 

What mattered is that when they were intact the feathers maintained their strange nature. On a hunch Sumi dropped an unbroken feather alongside a damaged one. As she’d expected, the unbroken feather fell far more leisurely, taking four times as long to reach the ground than the other. She grabbed two similarly sized stones from nearby, wrapping a feather and twine to each. Once more, the bundle containing the undamaged feather fell slower than the normal rock, though this time it took half as long to reach the ground instead of four times. The implications of that quickly began filling Sumi’s mind with heady engineering fantasies. 

It seemed that this was at least something that interested Hikoshi again. While Sumi was inking in her most recent observations she felt the presence of her girlfriend hovering over her shoulder. Hikoshi paused for a moment, probably afraid of interrupting, before Sumi raised a hand to wave her on. 

“What are you going to use them for?” She asked. 

“I was thinking of putting them in the interior of my armor. They’re strong, but the ends are too fragile to work as protection. Hopefully adding them will help me take falls better, if they work as well for me as they did for the Monster.”

“Do you think they’d work for an airship?”

Sumi considered that. Sure, weightlessness would be an amazing edition to the Stellar, but how practical was it? She looked around at the piles of feathers, not enough to stuff a pillowcase. 

“Probably, but I’ve got no idea how we’d get enough. We’d have to stuff like six whole Monsters into the envelope just to coat the envelope, and the Stellar is one of the smallest airships around.”

Hikoshi didn’t look dejected, only contemplative. “It might still help for hot air balloons, I think. Or for shipping things that airships normally aren’t economical to carry, like metal and ore. You’ll have to let me know how it affects your armor.”

“If I have enough left over we can test it to see how exactly it affects what it’s applied to.”

Hikoshi nodded, eyes defocusing as she considered. “So far you’ve got a load that takes half again as long to fall with one feather, four times as long when it’s a feather on its own. Is that a linear reduction, or proportional to the size of the feather? Or maybe the weight of the load it’s carrying? And is the reduction really in total weight, or in acceleration, or some other property?” Hikoshi’s eyes flicked greedily over the feathers. “How many do you think you’ll need for your armor?”

Sumi didn’t like that look. “As many as it takes, I’d say. I’ll let you know when I’m done.”

Hikoshi stuck out her tongue. Then, after a quick glance at Souta, a mischievous gin overtook her. “You’re no fun. I just wanted a few to start messing with before you’re done with them, and it’s rude to keep a girl waiting, you know.”

Sumi matched Hikoshi’s grin. “I remember you telling me that yesterday, and my answer is still--”

Souta’s violent retching interrupted Sumi, setting them all into a fit of laughter. He loudly changed the topic, calling Sumi over to compare notes. She relented, since she'd already gotten the reaction she’d wanted out of him. Eventually he’d realize that half of their flirting was voiced specifically to irritate him, but he hadn’t yet, and she planned to take full advantage of it. They returned to the ship shortly after with a bundle of collected Monster feathers, not wanting to spend too much of the day messing with the strange artifacts.

With the looming specter of an unpredictable threat no longer dangling over their heads the work on the Stellar progressed much faster. Souta had gathered plenty of good wood the day before, and their Hunter’s knives made carving it a simple enough affair.

Well, simple when compared to having to construct an entire sawmill. The wound in the Stellar’s hull was some fifteen feet long, but little more than a foot wide. It was thankfully nearly parallel to the beam of the ship, the impact on the mountainside having knocked free several of the intertwined planks instead of truly tearing a path through the body. Their challenge now was turning several eight to ten foot lengths of round branches into joined pieces of wood, and then attaching that to the pre-existing hull of the ship.

The dockyard that had built the Stellar had almost certainly used a fine mix of pine tar and other resins to make a gluey caulk, which had been applied in layers to the spaces between the boards. They had neither the materials nor the time to do the same, much less the expertise. 

Sumi initially tried to replicate the complex dado joint her village’s carpenter had frequently used to join wood without any kind of expensive adhesive or nails, but all that achieved was the butchering of a few ends of wood. She might be able to figure it out eventually, but she’d never trust the ship to her trial-and-error methodology. At Souta’s urging she eventually contented herself with wrapping the branches in fine hemp rope, slicing one of the anchor lines free to serve the purpose. 

Hikoshi had given her quite the look when she’d done that, but the cannibalization of the ship didn’t stop there. With no way to attach the newly formed plank to the ship itself she’d had to pry nails from its interior, taking many of them from different parts of the ship. Two of the legs of Hikoshi’s table lost their mountings, and each of the chairs sacrificed a nail or two. The engine trapdoor that was still lodged in the ceiling lost its hinges entirely, now held into its slot by only its own weight. Eventually Sumi had collected enough to make both the ship and Hikoshi’s teeth rattle, but the repairs could proceed. 

Souta and Sumi held up the plank to the gash on the ship while Hikoshi went inside, using the pommel of Sumi’s sword to nail planks into the wood. Bridging the gap with intermittent sheets of wood let them inefficiently lock the replacement pieces in place, though they sacrificed weight and aesthetics to do so. According to Hikoshi the white wood had the look of an open wound next to the dark hull of the Stellar , one still oozing with pale pus. 

    “Oh, come on, it’s not that bad.” Souta consoled her. “Think of it like a stylish streak of gray hair, like people up north do. Something to prove you’re not afraid of getting older, that you’re even excited for it.”

“Maybe she would be more okay with that,” Hikoshi countered, referring to the Stellar as a person, “If she was a bit older than her first month of flying. As it is, it’s not exactly a great sign.”

“We’re just getting her an early start on all the latest fashions. Trust me, she’ll be all the rage once we sail back into port. Captains everywhere will be painting a white streak on their hull, trying to pass themselves off as the one and only Stellar. ” 

Hikoshi snorted derisively. “Then they’re all going to need a smaller ship. We’re pond fish in an ocean next to most. No one would believe ‘em if they tried that. ”

Souta elbowed her, grinning widely. “Hey, look at that! You’re already assuming people would want to copy us.”

A self-conscious laugh finally broke through Hikoshi’s dour attitude. “Yeah, yeah. Everyone’s going to be trying to pass themselves off as the first airship over the southern mountains. Why wouldn’t they, right? She’s the fastest ship in the sky.”

Sumi hummed, thinking. “You know, for being nineteen you’ve already got a pretty illustrious career. You were second in command on the largest ship in the world, then you became the pilot of the fastest. Wonder what record you’re going for next?”

“I’ll settle with ‘most alive sailor’ at the end of this, if we’re being honest. Now let’s get the ship loaded again. Daylight’s wasting.”

They began to pack up the gear they’d brought out of the ship, sparse as they were. The added weight of their replacement wood would have been a problem if they hadn’t already tossed so many of their supplies overboard, but as it was the Stellar was eager to take to the skies. Hikoshi had to lower its buoyancy once more as Sumi and Souta went around the clearing untying the docking ropes. They went about it as fast as they could, hoping to avoid any more grumbling about the frame not being designed to take the ship’s full weight. 

They were airborne again by midday, gnawing on the last of their rations that had survived the emergency supply purge. Most of the wildlife they’d spotted in the organized forest had been too small to make a proper meal of, so they were hoping to find someplace better for Hunting soon. 

There was another reason that Sumi and Souta were eager to get clear of the strange forest, though, and it was one they hadn’t dared to voice in earshot of Hikoshi. 

The dirt had been barren, the creatures small. For the first time since taking to the skies they’d found no signs of large herds of herbivores, despite the obvious abundance of easy to reach trees. Even the strange Monster, as eerily threatening as it was, had suggested something more concerning. 

The entire forest was a conquered domain. The Monster they’d encountered was massive, formidable, and utterly cautious. It never truly slept, and despite having likely never seen a Hunter before it had been too timid to do more than survey them from a distance. It had watched the skies while it rested. 

Something haunted this pale grove. 

Something that could fly.

Sumi kept a surreptitious lookout the entire time they were aloft, eyes scanning the horizon as best she could without looking too nervous in front of Hikoshi. Worrying her would achieve nothing, their only knowledge of the threat circumstantial at best, something their pilot could do nothing to prepare for. Souta had retreated back to the bunkroom on the pretense of browsing his collection to find Hikoshi’s requested research, but Sumi knew his knowledge of his library was encyclopedic. He could have dropped them off in minutes, not hours, and that meant he was keeping watch through the rear window. 

This vague, helpless paranoia was a new sensation to Sumi. Whenever she’d entered a dangerous environment before she’d at least known what to expect, the signs of impending danger well-explained and her recognition of them rehearsed. Here she was guided only by the sickly feeling in her gut and constant vigilance, never knowing what to expect. 

Eventually she could tell that Hikoshi was picking up on her tension despite her best efforts otherwise. She excused herself to head to the back, planning to work on the engine to give her something to take her mind off her fears. She was fooling herself if she thought she was capable of keeping a better lookout than Hikoshi, regardless.

She nodded her greeting to Souta, who was predictably staring out the rear window with a pile of books stacked up next to him. Scraps of paper had been slipped between the pages, indicating for Hikoshi where each thick book spoke of flying Monsters. 

Sumi fumbled with the de-hinged trapdoor, lifting it an awkward task after she’d partially ruined it. 

Souta and Sumi had managed earlier to bend the steel shaft that drove the propeller back into shape, using their Hunter’s strength and leverage to align it according to Hikoshi’s instructions. Spinning the propeller by hand had shown no wobble to it, but the real test could only be conducted by starting the engine.

She hopped down into the small cubby that held the steam engine, running her eyes along it. Getting it running was sooner said than done. 

The steam that had detonated the machine had broken free right in the middle of the tube that connected the fuel to the pistons, precisely where the valve Sumi had mangled open had been placed. Careful consideration over the last day had revealed to her that perhaps the valve had been so difficult to turn not due to manufacturer incompetence, but to prevent exactly what she’d done. A normal aviator couldn’t have budged it, after all. They just hadn’t expected a Hunter to start mucking with an airship’s engine.

She crawled out again to grab the two precious instruction sheets, taking her time to analyze the diagram now that the ship wasn’t in immediate danger. The specifications of water levels, coal consumption rates, pressure in relation to altitude, and a great number of other things were still borderline incomprehensible to her, but she slowly pieced together a fuller understanding of the designer’s intentions. 

“So, how are things going with Hikoshi?” Souta asked without prompting. His voice was lowered, but his words startled her all the same.

Sumi had to fight to not crumple the diagrams. “Good. They’re… good.” She managed.

“Really? Because, like, yesterday I came back to camp and saw your armor scattered everywhere--”

“Nothing happened!” Sumi hissed immediately. Souta’s face looked doubtful. “Nothing, at least, like what you’re thinking.”

“So you didn’t get down and--”

“I am trying to focus on some repairs right now! Go watch the window or something. It’s got to be more interesting than girl talk right now.”

Sumi dropped back down in the cubby hole, bending over to hide her blush from Souta. She tried to re-establish her train of thought.

Her suspicion of the valve being a later edition to the design had been correct. On the ship’s diagram she saw a small connection running beneath the interior deck, all the way under the engine to just beneath the helm’s wheel. A third lever, larger and independent of the two pedals that controlled the ship’s tilt, had been whited out. 

It seemed that the engine had originally been intended to be controllable by the pilot to some degree, capable of increasing or decreasing its speed as desired. It seemed an incredibly helpful function to remove at the last minute, and she wondered why they had intentionally broken their own design-- until she recalled precisely why. The thunderous burst of steam, and the pain in her face and arms. Screaming, tasting blood, blinded. A normal person probably wouldn’t be walking by now if they’d even lived. The functionality had been too much of a risk, and it seemed they hadn’t been able to refine the tool before delivering it to the Guild. 

She set the diagrams aside up top, bringing a lantern into the small space. The overall engine seemed largely undamaged, her inspection finding only a thin seam burst right underneath the valve she’d turned. It frightened her to think of how much damage had been done by such a small imperfection. 

Sumi lifted the lantern to the seam, crouching down to press an eye close to the crack. She could see some kind of structure inside the six-inch pipe, but couldn’t determine much more. She grunted while she maneuvered her right hand around to the valve, managing to spin it.

Whatever was inside rattled while she spun the valve, but nothing else happened. The mechanism to restrict the flow of steam had been broken, whether by the explosion or her prying she wasn’t sure. Patching up the hole and restarting the engine now would only guarantee a second malfunction. If she wanted to fix it she’d have to open up the pipe and inspect what was inside, something the diagrams didn’t clearly demonstrate. She only hoped it was something she was capable of replicating, or at least repairing. 

She popped up from the space, addressing Souta. “Hey. You think our knives can cut through steel?” She spoke quickly, as if in a hurry, trying to keep him from pestering her again.

“You mean our Hunter’s knives?” He clarified.

“No, I wanted to know if the kitchen knives are going to slice through our stove. Of course I meant our Hunter’s knives, idiot.”

He hummed, considering. “I’ve never tried it on steel. I don’t think it could, or else it could cut through stuff like the links on my armor. I think it can cut through normal iron, though, since I’ve definitely cut the skin of Monsters that were hard as iron with it.”

“In that case, follow-up question: do you think this engine is made out of steel or iron?”

Souta's eyes widened. “Sumi, are you about to slice up this ship’s steam engine? The one-of-a-kind, obscenely expensive prototype?”

“What are you worried about?” She asked, unsheathing her knife and ducking back down. “It’s not like I can make it more broken.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure you could.”

Her voice was muffled as she bent over, awkwardly wiggling her way to the break in the line. “Well, I won’t. I’m just making one little cut. Practically surgical.”

“Nothing good can come of you cutting that thing up, Sumi.”

She rolled her eyes at him, though he couldn’t see it. “Then you better hope this sucker’s steel instead of iron.” 

She used her left hand to wedge the knife into the seam, which had fortunately split perpendicular to the rest of the pipe. If she really could cut through the iron with her knife she’d just need to widen it, completing the break all the way around the pipe.

She managed to get her knife into place, though its overly long pommel was scraping against the roof of the cubby. She wedged it deeper, feeling the flat of the blade press against some mechanism inside. 

She shoved the knife to the far side, bracing a shoulder against the wall for leverage. She had to huff with effort as it caught in the gap, an ugly scraping noise bouncing around the cubby. She threw her back into it, gritting her teeth. 

The blade began to slip forward, achingly slow, but forward all the same. She readjusted her grip, pulling on the far side with her other hand. The sound grew louder, prompting Souta to yell at her from above, which only encouraged her. 

After several minutes of sweat-soaked effort she’d achieved perhaps an inch of progress. She let her arm drop away, breathing heavy. She could technically do it, she knew, but it would be hours of effort. 

While she rested, her thoughts involuntarily returned to what Souta had asked her earlier. As much as he’d seemed to doubt her, nothing that serious had happened. I mean, it was definitely a step up from anything she’d done before, but it was a normal, healthy progression of the relationship. At least, she thought it was, since she’d never been in one before. Hikoshi had hinted that she had some kind of experience, trying to allay Sumi’s nerves, but she also remembered her telling Sumi that she’d never been in a relationship. Where, exactly, she had therefore got that experience from was left to interpretation, but Sumi dove back into her work before her mind could trip down that rabbit hole. 

She brought her lantern up close again, trying to see if she’d exposed any more of the mechanism. She was pleased to see that her prying had widened the original crack, exposing exactly what her earlier meddling had broken.

A pair of semi-circle steel plates were placed underneath the valve, opening like window shutters to allow more steam to flow through when the screw was spun by the valve. That screw was snapped in half, its lower portion missing. If she had to hazard a guess, the missing piece was currently rattling along somewhere in the pipe. She prayed that it hadn’t been forced deeper into the mechanism, somewhere entirely irretrievable. 

She still wasn’t sure how to fix the engine, but at least she had a goal to distract her from her anxiety. She surfaced into the bunk room, meeting Souta’s disapproving glare with beaming pride. Shuffling through their various trunks eventually produced a suitable tool, a flexible hollow reed that Souta told her was for breathing while looking down into the water. It was several feet long, enough to reach the end of the steam pipe. She whittled a tiny hook from the wooden wall beside her hammock and used some adhesive to attach it to the end of the reed. Once the glue had dried, she went fishing. 

She found the half-screw piece in mercifully short order, but removing it took far longer. It scraped and rolled along the tube, and she had no good way precisely to maneuver the end of her hook. Even when she managed to drag it beneath the seam the task proved frustrating, because she had to carefully twist the corkscrew until its tip poked through the gap enough for her fingernails to grab. She eventually did so, though she was certain by the fifteenth time she’d dropped it that the frustration was going to end with a stripe of gray in her hair to match the Stellar’s.  

That done, she turned her attention back to fixing the open gap. She could see well enough now to push at the steel flaps with her knife, but she didn’t know what their correct position was. She’d have to leave that riddle for later.

She crawled head-first into the space, pushing her lantern ahead of herself. She reached the spot where the diagram had indicated the controls to the steam engine began their run up to the helm, and did find some small rods that slipped out through the wall of the box to run underneath the deck. 

“Souta!” She yelled, forcing herself a bit further down. She heard only a muffled response. “Hand me the diagram papers! I don’t want to cram myself in here twice!” Another muffled response, this one with the distinct pitch of complaining, but the papers appeared in a gloved hand behind her a second later. She couldn’t turn around in the small space, so she kicked her shoes off and pinched them between her feet, ignoring the baffled laughter that followed. She reached an arm back and her legs forward, eventually managing to bring the papers in front of her.

Before she could start working again, though, Souta’s head appeared upside down in the engine cubby. 

“So, then, just over-the-clothes kind of stuff?” 

He was whispering, but the small space made his voice boom. Sumi slammed her forehead into the deck, staining it with coal residue.

“Why do you care?” 

“‘Cause you’re my girl, girl. Why wouldn’t I be interested in my bud’s love life?”

“Because you’re my teacher, not just my friend?”

He affected a dramatic gasp. “Sumi! I’m your friend first and always, not just your boss. I mean, I kinda am your boss, and you definitely have to do everything I say no matter what for the rest of your life, but even more than that? I’m your friend.”

“Aren’t I literally your apprentice?”

“Aw, c’mon, that’s just what the Guild says. You’re the one that’s pointed out a dozen times that I’m just a few years older than you. Now come on. Spill the beans.”

“No.”

He responded with a literal whine. “Don’t be like that! Think of it like this, then. I’m not prying into your private affairs, I’m gifting you the opportunity to brag to me about them. Doesn’t that sound better?”

Sumi sighed, defeated. What did it say about her if that really did sound better? She was going to regret this.

“If I tell you about it will you leave me alone so I can work?”

She could hear the grin in his voice. “I promise that I won’t stop bugging you until you do.”

She rolled over, looking him in his upside-down eyes. He had all the eagerness of a boy getting his first puppy.

“Alright, yes. It was over-the-clothes stuff.”

“And kissing?”

“Of course we kissed. You think we’d get handsy otherwise?”

“I don’t know, some people have weird boundaries. Did you have fun?”

Sumi’s blush really started to burn now. She broke eye contact. “...yes.”

She heard the pitter-patter of excited feet thumping the deck above her head. My word, she wished she’d never learned about this side of him. 

“Was she any good at it? Were you?”

“I really don’t think you need to know that one, Souta.” Sumi groaned. 

“That’s my last question, I promise.”

She let out a long-suffering sigh. “Alright, yes. She was good at it. I wasn’t, but she said I was a quick learner.”

“I already knew that about you.” She opened her mouth to snap back, then closed it slowly. He cocked his head, the motion looking odd when his hair was standing on end. “Something bugging you?”

“Well…” She wiped at her forehead, trying to clear away the coal dust. “I mean, she was good at it. And she mentioned that she had experience, which was supposed to, you know, reassure me, but… Well, that means I’m not the first one she’s done stuff with.”

“Sumi. Don’t tell me you care about not being her first--”

“No, no, no, it’s not that. It’s just, you know, what if I’m not any good at this? The relationship stuff, the physical stuff? She’s definitely ‘been with’ someone who knew more than I did.”

“Girl.” He began, an instructor’s tone dripping back into his voice. “Don’t worry about that. If you do something she doesn’t like, or don’t do something she does like, that’s on her. The same thing goes for you. You both have to tell each other what you want from the whole relationship, or else none of it’s going to work.”

“That… is surprisingly level-headed advice, from you.”

“Which is funny, because I’m really not level-headed right now.” He wiggled his dangling hair for emphasis. “I think the both of you forget I was already married at your age. And speaking of being level-headed, I’ll stop bugging you. Feel like I’m about to pass out dangling here.”

He retreated back above, leaving Sumi alone in the cubby once more. She rolled back over to thump her head into the deck several more times, trying to physically knock away her embarrassment. But despite the irritating nature of his badgering, his point at the end had been solid enough. She was far from confident, but she could admit that to herself. How hard would it be to admit it to Hikoshi?

Hard enough that her fists clenched at the thought, apparently. She’d really been banking on her newfound Hunter’s confidence pouring over to other aspects of her life. No luck there, it would seem. Sumi drummed her hands against the deck a few times, shaking her head. She picked up the diagrams again, trying to dive back in and take her mind off of things.

She hadn’t understood what the throttle mechanism was before, on account of its absence from the labels of the diagram. She supposed they’d been blotted out when the faceless designer had decided to can the feature. But it was still depicted on the drawing, and from that she could try to figure out how it worked. 

Many of the curves and twists of the piping were completely inscrutable to her, even if her training with her father had familiarized her with schematic notations. She could tell what the interior looked like, and where parts were, but not why they were there or why they were shaped certain ways. The tubes took sudden dives and erratic turns, widening in places and narrowing in others before meeting in the two larger chambers that held the pistons. If she had a year of freetime and all the spare engines she could care to disassemble, she might be able to grasp a logic to it. But she didn’t.

What she could determine, though, was where the control mechanism entered the mix. The two rods entered the engine just before the pistons, in the rectangular chambers where the steam pipes came together. There they attached to a plate that could be lowered or raised, altering the amount of room available for the piston and steam to accelerate. When one piston reached the end of the chamber it blocked the exhaust exit, forcing the steam towards the other piston.

The pistons were both attached to a wheel in such a way that the raising of one would force the other lower, and thus by rapidly alternating positions the engine provided constant power to the wheel. Raising the limiting plate allowed more steam to build up in each chamber, giving more time for each piston to accelerate, and therefore allowed the entire assembly to move faster.

Unfortunately, it also meant that the chambers had to hold more pressure, and the wheel was subjected to more force. She could only guess that that was what had happened before, one piston hitching for a moment, causing a chain reaction. Steam couldn’t escape through the exhaust, so the increased flow had behaved as water always did and broke through the weakest point in the system: the hole where the valve pierced the pipe. 

Sumi tugged on the lines that headed for the helm, seeing if they could be moved. It took quite a bit of force, but the metal rods did indeed move, and she saw the pistons respond accordingly. 

She decided on a plan, but she’d want to run it by Hikoshi first. She gracelessly wormed her way out of the engine cubby, finally stretching with relief when she reached the trap door. 

Chapter Text

Sumi explained her theory to Hikoshi as best she could, using the diagrams to illustrate why she thought repairing the broken valve would hopefully be unnecessary. Hikoshi followed along easily, unexpectedly adding her own suggestions and explanations of certain aspects of the design. 

That was surprising, because Sumi honestly didn’t understand her plan herself.

Hikoshi merely nodded when Sumi got to the part about the throttle, as if she’d expected a function like that on the ship. Her calm response to the revelations Sumi had agonized over for the last few hours eventually got under her skin.

“Alright,” she said, breaking off her explanation. “What do you know that I don’t?”

“You mean, besides how steam engines work?”

“You don’t know how steam engines work. You didn’t even know what this diagram was supposed to be when we were in the Guild.”

“I didn’t then,” Hikoshi admitted smugly. “But I did a few hours later. You two did your interviews around town, so I thought I’d go for my own. Found a printing shop that used steam engines and bribed the owner into giving me a tour.”

Sumi’s brow crinkled. “So… how much time do you think you could have saved me if I’d asked you for help?”

Hikoshi drummed her fingers on the wheel. “Oh, I don’t know… most of it, I’d say?”

“You asshole!” Sumi laughed, shoving her girlfriend hard enough for her to jerk the wheel, wobbling the ship.

“In my defense, you never asked for my help. You seemed antsy, so I figured you needed some space.”

“Sure, for the first, like, ten minutes. After that I was just sweaty and frustrated.”

Sumi brought out the papers again, smoothing them out on Hikoshi’s desk. Despite both of their best efforts, the precious documents were becoming crinkled from constant use. Sumi worked her way through the pages again, running a finger along the lines to have Hikoshi explain everything she could. Hikoshi was far from an expert, of course, because she’d only had an afternoon to learn about a printing press’ engine, but the basic ideas behind both were awfully similar. It seemed every steam engine in the world had been built to spin a wheel, and it was mainly the size of the wheel that changed between them. Printing presses, pumps, and now propellers, they were all glorified water wheels.

Where Hikoshi’s brief education was most illuminating was the numbers, things like pressure and rotations per minute and that which limited them. They agreed that the now-broken valve had been a last minute addition, an awkward fix to limit the power when they’d had to axe the throttle system. What they couldn’t determine was why the throttle had been axed in the first place. 

There was the violent explosion issue, of course, which had already come up once, but they didn’t think that alone would be enough to get rid of it. Surely if they never advanced the throttle past a certain point the burst of steam wouldn’t happen again? 

That was where their investigation stalled. They pored over the notes again and again and could find nothing about the throttle system that precluded it from being used. After Sumi and Hikoshi had spent nearly a half hour agonizing over the decision, Sumi went with her usual procedure and went ahead anyway.

She slipped her sword between the deck’s planks, just above where the diagram said the control lines should be. She wiggled it back and forth, forcefully prying the wood free. It ripped out with a popping noise, a six foot hole into the dark between-space of the hull revealed. 

The gap between the exterior hull and interior was thin, rarely thicker than a foot, as the interior lining’s only purpose was to give them a flat space to walk over the curved body. She set a lantern down inside, following it with her head.

The traditional lines that fed from the control wheel to the ship’s control surfaces were there, of course, and to her great relief they were beside the predicted throttle controls. The metal joints that traveled up from the engine met at a long pole that had been tied to the deck. 

Sumi picked away the ties, lifting the rod. There was a small bolt on the bottom that matched a slot between the two control lines, making it obvious where it connected. It took Sumi all of twenty seconds to attach it.

She moved it back and forth, watching the two lines respond. She went to the engine itself and had Hikoshi move the lever, confirming that it worked through the whole length, which it did. 

They puzzled over the reason for hiding the throttle for a while longer, even inviting Souta to the conversation, but none of them could figure it out. That probably wasn’t a good thing, but it was either that or accept the fact that the next time they fueled the engine it would be fifteen minutes away from blowing off the back end of their ship. 

Sumi spent the next few hours melting down a few pilfered iron arrowheads, reassuring Souta that she’d smith him more when they next found a source of material. She actually used the engine itself as a forge, shunting all of the smoke out of the exhaust pipe so she could heat the firebox enough to make the iron malleable. She had to stand well away from the forging area, which was poorly ventilated, using the tip of her sword mounted on a long pole to manipulate the iron among the coals.

Souta suited up when the metal had reached an appropriate temperature. His Rathalos carapace armor was inherently resistant to heat, though it was meant to deal with sudden flashes instead of continuous baking. He would still fare better than Sumi, though, who would have died from either heat stroke or bursting into flames, whichever occurred first.

They made a careful plan, not wanting Souta to spend a second longer than was necessary in the oversized oven. Sumi counted down from three and, at the last second, flipped the amalgamated iron plate out of the firebox. It hit the fireproofed floor and hissed.

Souta dropped down, grasping it between two arrows like they were oversized chopsticks. Sumi could see the heat distorting his form as he dropped into a crawl, wiggling his way towards the broken piece of pipe. 

He slapped the metal on top, then began doing the best thing they could think of. 

He was punching it. 

The sight and sound of his scaled gloves pounding against the iron would have been hilarious if she hadn’t known how desperate they were for it to work. With no tools, and precious little room to use them even if they had them, this was what they had. They were gambling that Souta’s Hunter fist blows were equivalent to a hammer.

The makeshift iron plate, mercifully, began to warp under the abuse. It took dozens of hits, Souta having to adjust his angle several times, but the lumpy metal slowly conformed to the pipe. When his punches stopped making any visible progress, Souta hurriedly backed out of the engine cubby, wiggling to freedom. Sumi had her gloves on and offered him a hand, pulling him up and back into the cooler cargo room.

Souta threw his helmet off as soon as he was free, gasping desperately. The room was still oppressively hot to Sumi, but she knew it must have felt as cool as a spring breeze to him.

“Are you alright?” She asked, watching his chest heave.

“Yeah,” He managed. “Just- didn’t want to breathe in there. Thought my lungs wouldn’t appreciate it.”

Sumi waited for his armor to cool enough for her to touch, then helped him pull it off piece by piece. An ashen silhouette of his splayed-out body had been burned into the wooden floor of the cargo room, but he hadn’t suffered any serious burns. 

Sumi tossed the thick trap door back down, letting it trap the heat once more to eventually be blown out with the exhaust. They would wait until the engine cooled to apply a layer of adhesive to the patch, hopefully stopping any loose steam from escaping. In an ideal scenario the two pieces of iron would bond and leave the pipe as strong as the original, but this was far from an ideal scenario. 

They spent the rest of the day up in the helm, waiting for the bunkroom and cargo storage to cool. Hikoshi spent her time making slight adjustments to the ship’s course and steadily filling out the grid of coordinates on her massive blank map. She was designating each square with the symbols that described its terrain, and Sumi noted that since crossing the mountains she’d already had to add several new symbols to the key. 

Judging by the map they were only a few days' travel from the first search zone suggested to them by the Hunter’s guild. Their pace was going to be agonizingly slow when compared to the rate they’d traveled before crossing the mountains, but it was unavoidable. Hikoshi didn’t know the currents here, so she couldn’t guarantee the wind would keep them on course overnight. They’d have to land at sunset each and every day, putting the ship at risk every time while losing half their travel time.

Not knowing the currents slowed them down in the daylight, too. Sumi had already watched Hikoshi have to hurriedly maneuver to a new stream when the wind began to push them away from their destination. That was made more difficult by the frequently cloudless skies, which left only guesswork as Hikoshi’s method to find a convenient patch of air. 

    The bizarre forest slowly thinned beneath them, arcing away to the east. It seemed the forest’s final barrier to expansion was a thick brown river that split the land, fed by an uncountable number of tiny tributaries. It was so wide that when Sumi had first seen it on the horizon she’d mistaken it for a lake. It took several minutes for the Stellar to cross its width. 

    Sumi felt a tension she hadn’t known was filling her slip away as the forest receded into the distance. That unnatural place had felt almost curated, as if something there had been tending it. Some thing’s personal garden. That they hadn’t encountered it was an incredible relief, and she looked eagerly ahead to see what the trip brought them next.  

The terrain beyond the river was a different kind of rolling plain from the one she’d passed over on her way to Narrowstraight. This one was pitted with small ponds, as if the landscape had been cratered by raindrops falling on dry dirt. She couldn’t rightly call the higher points hills, because they seemed to be more accurately the survivors of whatever had scarred the landscape. 

“Are we ascending right now?” Sumi asked Hikoshi. 

She gave her an odd look. “Not that I’ve noticed. Why?”

Sumi pointed into the distance. “Because it looks like everything is curving away from us right now.”

Hikoshi followed her indication, squinting. “Yeah, that’s weird. It’s like we’re in the middle of a bowl. See up ahead? It keeps going down, too. That’s got to be at least twenty miles of a gentle slope.”

Sumi turned to Souta, who had been only vaguely following the conversation. “Have you ever seen any place like this? A never-ending slope?”

Souta’s eyes focused, pulled away from whatever daydream he’d been having. He thought about it for a moment before shaking his head. 

“Not really. Height above sea level will drop gradually when you’re getting close to the ocean, but we’re nowhere near. Hikoshi, did the Guild’s resources tell you anything about this area?”

Hikoshi made a sarcastic spitting noise, still not over her contempt for the antiquated records. “No. Just some reference to a ‘damnable pitland, too porous to be navigated’. The explorer didn’t even bother to cross it, just decided to walk parallel to it for a few days before they kept going south. And yes, that’s literally all they wrote about it, verbatim. I wasn’t even sure what they were describing until we got here.”

“Huh.” Souta leaned back in his chair, scratching his sideburns. “I wonder if it’ll go back up on the other side or if the entire far side of the continent is at a lower elevation.”

“It has to go back up at some point, right?” Hikoshi said. “It’s not like we’re heading to the edge of the world.”

“Who knows? That’s what we’re here to find out. Maybe we’ll just circle the whole damn globe and end up on the far side of Narrowstraight. That’d be something, wouldn’t it?” 

“I’m pretty sure the Guildmaster that sent us off would be dead by the time we finished that journey. I wonder if the replacement would still pay me?”

“Eh, I wouldn’t worry about that. Guild’s got plenty of money. I’m sure we’ll be just old enough to retire by then, so it should work out perfectly.”

“You guys do remember we’re supposed to be figuring out what’s causing Monsters to massacre villages, right?” Sumi reminded them. “We don’t have time to come back gray-haired.”

Souta rolled his eyes. “Sure, Sumi. That’s the only thing that’s stopping us from running off on a fifty-year adventure right now. Moral obligations.”

“I’m just saying…” Sumi defended, trailing off. 

What Sumi had decided to call the ‘pondlands’ stubbornly persisted as the day trailed on, offering her a host of new sights. The large herbivores she’d been familiar with from before were no longer seen, replaced by sprawling herds of more nimble deer-like creatures. They had long, twisting horns, their tan coats spilling like water across the terrain. She couldn’t even begin to count the numbers of a single herd, but they had to be in the hundreds, if not thousands. With Souta’s spyglass she could guess that they were as tall as her, their musculature built for speed rather than power. Hikoshi saw her watching and obligingly dropped their altitude, the currents convenient for the moment to do so.

The herds left swathes of devoured grass in their wake, working their way across the pondlands like a scythe through a wheatfield. Sumi almost envied them at first, the pace of their life so lackadaisical and their food so easy to find. 

She should have known better by now, though. 

A section of the herd had surrounded a pond, bending low to drink from it. She could see several young among them, many nursing from their mothers. She was about to ask for Souta’s spyglass when it happened. 

What Sumi had mistaken for two floating pieces of wood in the middle of the pond flicked open to reveal themselves as eyes, yellow and furious. The center of the pond exploded as a massive form burst out of the water, jaws some ten feet long with jagged rows of teeth flashing in a great maw. 

Its head reminded Sumi of the crocodiles she’d seen in the rivers back home, though larger by many multiples. 

That comparison began to falter as the Monster launched forward, powerful tail churning the water to frothing foam behind it. 

The deer-things broke and ran almost instantly, bounding away, but their flight was impeded by the crowd that had been following them towards the watering hole. The crocodilian Monster reached the shore in seconds, revealing just how different it was to what Sumi was familiar with. 

It bounded out of the water on four long legs, loping forward in a hound-like run. It accelerated faster than anything she’d ever seen, darting across the terrain as if shot from a ballista. The confused herd finally began to heed the cries of alarm, flowing away in one large mass, but it was too late-- Sumi knew at least some of them would be caught. 

But she was wrong. The Monster’s sprint fell apart, its legs tumbling over themselves to send it crashing to the ground. Sumi was just close enough to hear its agonized hiss as its flank dug a trough in the dirt, coming to a slow stop. 

She saw, then, what had caused the problem. Both of its back legs were missing feet, one having been severed at the ankle, the other halfway up the shin. It tried to right itself to continue the assault, but it didn’t seem to comprehend the limitations imposed by its injuries. Its back legs flailed uselessly, eventually coming into contact with the ground by sheer chance. The Monster righted itself then, but the herd had long since dispersed. The creature watched its prey flee while standing silently, motionlessly. Then it fell onto its stomach, mouth open in a pant. 

Souta was beside her, watching as well. His face had fallen. 

“That’s a Lacerta. I’ve never seen a sketch of one before, just read descriptions, but I’m sure that’s what it is. Look at its tail, see?”

Sumi smushed her nose to the glass, inspecting it as best she could. It was still ahead of them, but they’d be passing it in a few minutes. She’d have a limited window to view it.  Unlike the crocodilians she was familiar with this creature’s tail moved vertically, not horizontally, like a whale’s or dolphin’s might. She slipped Souta’s spyglass from his pocket, bringing it to her eye to inspect it closer.

Its hide was composed of pebbled skin much like its smaller cousins, but she found it interesting that the scutes-- what the crocodile equivalent of scales were called, she’d learned from Souta-- were the same size as most every crocodile she’d seen before. She would have expected them to be proportionally larger, but that wasn’t the case. From high above the lines between scutes were indiscernible, as if the Lacerta had plain black flesh for skin. 

“It’s starving.” Sumi noted, voice sad. The Lacerta’s hide was tightly wrapped around its bones, forming an unnatural-looking oval torso connected by a thin neck to its head. Assuming it followed the same general body plan as a crocodile, it should have been far thicker.

“Yeah, it is,” Souta agreed. “I wonder how long ago it got those injuries? If it hasn’t been able to hunt at all it must have been recent.” 

Sumi shook her head. “Crocodiles can go months without eating. This one’s bigger, but bigger crocs could go even longer than the small ones, and I don’t see any reason why that trend wouldn’t hold. Besides, you saw the wounds. They scarred over a long time ago.”

“Ooh, look at that, Souta,” Hikoshi said. “Sumi knew a thing about Hunting you didn’t.”

“She did grow up in a jungle, practically cuddled with crocodiles since she was a kid.” He said dismissively. “I’m a city slicker compared to her.”

They watched the Lacerta pass underneath them, rousing from its panting to slip back into another pond. Its camouflage was immaculate. As soon as the water stilled she had no way to know it was there. Sumi didn’t know how long it would be before another herd passed it by, but her gut felt it would be too long. 

“You thinking what I’m thinking, Souta?”

He took in a long breath, eyes closing. 

“Is it ‘oh boy, I can’t wait to get eaten by a giant crocodile’? Because that’s what I think you’re about to suggest. And if that’s the case, no, I wasn’t thinking that.”

“It’s starving to death. It’s got weeks of pain left at best, so Hunting it would be a mercy, and it’s nowhere near any settlements. Even if killing it early ruined the local balance, which I really doubt, there’s no one around to be affected by it. Why not go for it?”

Hikoshi, hearing this, began to steepen their descent. 

“Because, Sumi, we know very little about this Monster. We don’t even know if your sword would scratch it, or if it’s got more energy than we’re prepared to deal with. What if it ignores us and makes a dash for the ship, tearing it to pieces?”

“Did the records you read peg it as that big of a threat?”

“No,” he admitted. “But they were close to a century old. Settlements on the far side of the mountains have always failed, and it was almost always Monster attacks that tipped them over the edge. I don’t see why we have to risk it.”

“The reason is staring you right in the face.” Sumi thumped her apceros breastplate, then gestured to the rest of her steel armor. “I’m dressed up like a toy soldier, not a Hunter. We may not know a lot about the Lacerta, but we know absolutely nothing about whatever is causing the problems we were sent out to investigate. I need gear like yours, something that will actually stand up to some damage. And besides, we’re nearly out of rations, and that thing’s meat will--”

Sumi cut herself off as Souta broke into a grin, pushing himself away from the window and rolling his shoulders. He took his bow off his back and began inspecting it. 

Sumi crossed her arms at him. He laughed. 

“What? I wanted to make sure your reasoning was good. I don’t want to train you to be a glory Hunter, I want to train you to be a living Hunter. Did you really think I was going to let us sail right past that sucker without at least taking a crack at it?” 

“I tend to believe what my friends tell me, yes.”

“That wasn’t your friend talking, that was your mentor, and he got you good. This thing’s a perfect opportunity, and the Guild will love having some proper records on a southern Monster species. Everything we have from back then is so fragmented, it’s infuriating.” He finished his inspection, returning the bow to its place on his back. “And besides, I’m itching to fight that thing. Did you see how fast it moved? This is gonna be a hell of a good time.”

Sumi turned to Hikoshi, recalling that she’d already begun bringing the ship in to land. 

“Did you know he was screwing with me?”

She gave an apologetic shrug. “Pretty much.”

“How?”

“He was using his Teacher Voice.”

“No he wasn’t. I know his Teacher Voice, and that wasn’t it.”

Souta patted her shoulder consolingly. “I’ve been practicing. Soon you won’t be able to tell Teacher Souta and Friend Souta apart at all.”

“I don’t think I like that.”

“Perfect!” 

Chapter Text

Hikoshi set the Stellar down just over a mile away from where they’d last seen the Lacerta, once more grumbling about the strain the hull was being put under from the repeated landings. It was designed to be anchored to foliage or docking moors, not gracelessly thrown into the dirt. Sumi promised her that she’d try to forge some more anchors when they found a decent source of metal, though she privately worried at how large her list of to-be-smithed items were growing. 

She and Souta departed the Stellar in lock-step, adopting the same careful gait they always did on a Hunt. The grass came up only to Sumi’s mid-thigh here, but the cratered ponds were everywhere. If there was more than one Lacerta in the area, they’d only know about it when it came bursting out of the water to attack them. 

Now, on the ground, she had a better angle on most of the ponds. It surprised her that many of the them didn’t share a water level, some several feet higher or shallower than others. They even passed a few that were entirely dry, empty bowls in the landscape covered with grass. Despite the variation in water levels, though, the depths of them were remarkably consistent. It looked as if a god’s meat tenderizer had smashed the landscape into its shape, dimpled indents stretching for dozens of miles in every direction. 

The ponds themselves were fairly opaque, a murky green tinged blue by the reflection of the sky above. Sumi saw a few signs of larger fish swimming through them, occasionally splashing as they made attempts at bugs resting on the wind-stirred surfaces, but most of the life they held was of smaller varieties. Toads, water-skimming insects, or colorful turtles that slipped off the shore when they passed. 

“You think the Lacerta is native to this environment?” Sumi asked.

“No, I don’t think so.” Souta answered. “I’d be surprised if it was, at least. Something that large wouldn’t live in little watering holes like these. I imagine it’s from that river we passed a while back.”

“Makes sense. It suffers an injury to some other Monster, then has to retreat to somewhere with less competition or get killed off entirely. But it isn’t built for this kind of life, and, compounded by its injuries, it couldn’t hunt enough to survive.”

“Circumstantial evidence all around, but it fits pretty well. I’ll believe it.” 

They continued their walk, heading in the direction of the Lacerta’s last known location. Sumi checked and rechecked her equipment as they walked, making sure the apceros breastplate was still well-secured by the metal straps. 

“So. What do you know about regular crocodiles?” Souta asked.

“Like we have back home? You lived there too, you know.”

“Sure, but I didn’t grow up there, and it wasn’t like I was Hunting plain old crocs. I know what I’ve read about them, but give me a refresher.”

Sumi graciously allowed only a small amount of smugness to creep into her voice as she audibly recalled what she could from her childhood lessons on avoiding jungle wildlife. 

“If you see a log in the water, it’s a croc. If you don’t see a log in the water, that means you missed the croc. They’re everywhere in the river, and they’re mean. They’ll eat a kid just as soon as they’ll eat a pig or a bird, and they’re nasty about how they do it. If you get grabbed by a regular croc you’re supposed to jab it in the eyes before it starts to spin, or else it’ll rip off whatever it got a hold of.”

“Spin?”

“Yeah, spin. They don’t have sharp edges to their teeth like piranha do, just pointed tips, so they roll their whole body super fast to rip off anything they want to eat. You remember old Setsudan?” 

“Guy without an arm, right? Is that what happened to him?”

Sumi nodded. “Croc in his irrigation ditch. He’d thought it was a log and reached over to pick it up, next thing he knew he was getting dragged under the water. Only reason he lived was because his arm came off before it finished killing him and the doc happened to be nearby, pulled him out of the river before he bled out. It would have come back to drag him under otherwise, stowed him for later.”

“That’s morbid. Most animals don’t go after humans as a part of their normal diet.”

“Exception that proves the rule, I guess. After all the stories I’ve heard in the village I think I’d rather fight a Great Jagras naked than get jumped by one of those twenty-footers I’ve heard about.”

“You know we’re on our way to fight one that’s way bigger than twenty feet, right?”

Sumi thumped her sheathed sword, baring her teeth in a predatory smile. “But we’re getting the jump on it, not the other way around, not to mention the fact that I'm not naked. And besides, it’s not really a crocodile.”

“Your optimism is borderline concerning, but what do you mean it’s not a crocodile? It’s basically a larger version of the same one that grabbed Setsudan.”

Sumi gave him a look. “Like hell it is. You see its legs? That thing has the build of a racing dog, not a croc. And its tail goes up and down for some reason, not side to side.”

“Yeah, I noticed that. More like a whale’s tail than anything else, except it’s the same thickness along the whole length. I wonder what’s up with that?”

“Maybe to help keep it off the ground when it runs? I don’t think either tail type is more efficient or something like that. At least it will have a harder time hitting us with it, unless we’re dumb enough to get underneath its tail.”

“Do regular crocs hit stuff with their tails?”

Sumi shrugged. “I heard they do, from some fishermen one time, but I don’t know for sure. Even if regular ones don’t, I’d bet the Lacerta’s tail is big enough to make it a better strategy. We’ll have to keep an eye on it.”

“Great,” Souta muttered. “Don’t get near its face, don’t get near its tail. If it ends up having spikes or some crap sticking off its sides we’ll have to give up entirely. Sucker would be deadly in every direction.”

They chatted plans for a while longer, until their march began approaching its end. They couldn’t tell exactly which pond was the one they’d seen from above, but even if they could there had been plenty of time for the Lacerta to move. She found herself nervously staring at every body of water, her pulse jumping each time she spotted the brown back of a turtle poking above the water. 

Sumi drew her sword preemptively, checking that the cord that kept it attached to her wrist was tied tight. She’d seen the Lacerta move once already and knew she’d soon be sprinting to avoid it. Idly, she wondered how well it could corner.

Two spots floated in the water ahead of her, a pair of brown driftwood pieces sitting eight feet apart or so. She put her arm out to stop Souta, who hadn’t noticed it. Sumi raised her sword, pointing at the driftwood.

Just at the waterline beneath the driftwood, so thin it was almost imperceptible, was a thin line of greenish-yellow iris. A black vertical split was the only thing that distinguished the color from the rest of the green pond.

Souta put an arrow to his bow, slowly putting tension on the string. Sumi reached up with her shield to lower her visor, vision narrowing to the jagged slits she’d cut in the metal face. This creature was, by far, going to be the largest thing she’d Hunted yet. 

The eyes drifted across the pond, so subtly that it was difficult to convince herself it wasn’t a breeze blowing them. But a breeze wouldn’t suddenly stop moving driftwood when it was perfectly aligned with her, nor would it cause the black slits to slip around to focus on her. 

Sumi tightened her grip on her shield, digging her feet into the dirt. 

The water exploded into a cloud of white mist, the green-black silhouette of the Lacerta at its epicenter. It arced out of the water entirely, heading straight for them.

It was met in mid-air by two of Souta’s whistling arrows impaling itself in its throat. Sumi was already shuffling backward, never letting her feet off the ground lest she lose her balance. 

The Lacerta’s gaping mouth snapped shut early, a flinch response to Souta’s arrows. She’d put just enough distance between them that instead of landing directly on top of her it landed just before her. 

Sumi’s sword arm shot out, meeting the snout of the Lacerta to the right of its nostrils. Her sword’s tip dug less than a half-inch into the skin, not even drawing blood. Sumi’s next actions were purely instinctive, twisting the blade as she pulled it back, then swiping upward. 

The paler skin on the lower half of the Lacerta was less sturdy, earning her a several foot long laceration that immediately welled with dark blood.

The Lacerta recoiled, front legs peddling to pull itself away from Sumi and Souta. Its yellow eyes stared at them in shock, the beast clearly not used to something so small being able to actually hurt it.

Souta reinforced that sudden shock with a series of arrows, bow twanging in rapid succession as he launched a volley at the Lacerta. He was aiming for its eyes, but the creature was still moving, and the first two arrows skated off its snout to uselessly whirl away into the grass. 

The third, though, scored a direct hit on its eyelid. Though the arrow didn’t pierce the skin, Souta's aim was rewarded by a violent flinch from the creature. It snapped its eyes nearly shut, watching them from a narrow band while halting its retreat. 

This was the point that most Monsters, if they had never met a Hunter before, would try to retreat. An unknown threat was as terrifying to a predator as it was to a Hunter, and few were arrogant enough to risk further injury dealing with an untested foe. 

This Lacerta, though, was starving, half-dead, and faced potential prey that wasn’t fleeing. It had no other option than to continue the engagement. 

Sumi dropped to a knee as it charged once more, much slower now that it couldn’t launch itself with its tail. Its mouth opened again, twisted to swallow Sumi whole. Every electric muscle in her body was screaming at her to flee, to leap, to do anything but hold her position, but those instincts were wrong.

Souta’s bow snapped over her right shoulder, firing off pairs of arrows each time. The Lacerta cleared the space between them in less than two seconds, but that was enough for six of Souta’s arrows to embed themselves in its tongue and throat.

The Lacerta was forced to close its jaws once again, meeting Sumi’s shield with a blunt snout as it dropped into a slide. The force of it threw her shield back into her chest, pinning her arm between the wood and her apceros plate, but her armor absorbed the rest of the blow. She was shoved backward several feet, shreds of grass being torn away while the ground around her was churned upward by a shock cone of distributed force. 

The Laceros’s momentum carried it on past her, to her right, and she took the opportunity to spin and slam the pommel of her sword into the closest bit of exposed hide. The Great Jagras tooth on her sword sunk in deeply, several inches of ivory disappearing into the black scutes. The creature’s movement tore it loose an instant later, but dark blood splattered itself across the grass as it slid on.

Sumi stood, moving backward. The creature’s front legs might be a threat, large enough to club her to death, but she was more concerned with what followed them.

The Lacerta recovered its wits, spinning in place to bring its tail around while rolling on its side. The shadow of the massive black slab passed over her.

She didn’t have time to yell at Souta. She only flung herself to the side, diving out of the shadow of the tail. It slammed down with a furious crack, throwing a huge cloud of dust into the air. 

She turned around, looking for Souta. He’d dove the other way, the tail now dividing them. He pulled one of his thicker arrows from his back, the kind that could only work up close. He turned to the Lacerta’s flank, where ribs were visibly distending its skin, and shot the fist-sized arrowhead into its side. 

Sumi ran forward while the tail rose, the Lacerta righting itself. She could see its back legs scrambling uselessly in the grass, trying to spin its back half around to bring its head closer to Souta, but it was too slow. Before he had to retreat Souta managed to fill its flank with arrows, a half-dozen or more fletched shafts protruding from the Monster’s right side. 

Sumi reached its left side, where the most injured of its legs were. Little more than an nub protruded from its knee, scars reddened from constant abrasion against the land. Sumi took advantage of Souta’s distraction and took her sword in both hands, stabbing downward on the leg. 

Her sword sunk in to the hilt, two feet of preternatural steel severing muscle and tendon alike. The Monster let out a bubbling hiss of fury, trying to knock her away, but it still didn’t understand that its leg was half as long. Sumi wrenched the blade upward, slicing through the seam between its armored scales. When she reached the hip she furiously wrenched the blade side to side, feeling its tip scrape against bone. 

The Lacerta’s leg fell suddenly limp, useless. She had no time to celebrate the victory, though, because it began to roll. She couldn't backpedal away, already pressed against its side. All she could do was put her shield between it and herself. 

The full weight of the creature threw her to the ground, crushing her. The world went dark as it rolled, pressing her into the soil with her limbs splayed at impossible angles. She felt the apceros chestpiece creak and groan while something began stabbing into the right side of her mid back. Her sword was wrenched from her hand, painfully yanking her wrist until something popped. 

The sky reappeared a moment later, but the sensation of crushing didn’t stop. Sumi lifted her head, looking down at the ruined armor that was now smashing her body. 

She was half a foot into the ground, pressed into it as if the soil was snow. The pain in her back intensified as she tried to move, a chill of cold steel reaching her through the agony. Her armor had split, and part of it was now impaling her. 

She forced herself to turn over, freeing herself from the self-made depression. Her head was pounding with pressure, so she reached up to tear her helmet off. It tore the skin of her ears as it went, its shape crushed by the force, and its removal only alleviated some of the pounding pain. 

The cold steel in her back was still there. Souta was shouting in the distance, keeping its attention, but that wouldn’t last for long. The Lacerta was hungry, and she was limp on the ground. 

Sumi’s left hand drew her Hunter’s knife from her belt, flipping it around to point tip down. Before she could think better of it she slammed it into her side, just above the hip. The tip of the blade sunk through the steel and continued on into her flesh, but she was pretty sure she didn’t have any important organs in that spot. 

Sumi pulled the knife out a small amount and began dragging it upward, slicing along the seam where the two plates of metal that made up her chestplate had been fused. The knife cut into her side as it went, but not too deep, she prayed. She had to stop before she reached the top, adjusting her grip so she could continue the cut all the way to the arm hole.

She took in her first gasp of air as the armor popped open like a clamshell, relieving the pressure on her chest. She had a long laceration that carried itself from her hip to the top of her ribs, varying in its depth. She reached her right hand around to feel at her back and found hot blood gushing out, soaking through her gauntlet’s leather in seconds. She dropped her Hunter’s knife and fumbled for her potion bottle, trying to find it before the lightheadedness of blood loss set in.

The ground jumped beneath her. Souta’s shouts intensified, his bow snapping rapidly. The Lacerta was coming. 

Sumi brought the potion to her lips, using her free hand to shove herself up. Her chestplate slipped away from her body, leaving her exposed to the open air as she tried to crawl forward. 

Her right leg, the same side that had been pierced by her armor, didn’t work quite right. It felt weak and shaky, responding sluggishly. Sumi downed the potion as fast as she could, willing the cool flush to come.

It did, mercifully. Her leg started to respond faster, the pain in her head, back, and joints slowly receding as torn ligaments reknit. She could actually see the muscles writhing in the elbow of the arm she was using to pull herself along. 

She forced herself up on two legs, turning to look at the Lacerta. She would have already been dead if it had been healthy, long since swallowed whole, but with only three working legs it hadn’t reached her yet. She popped her wrist, jerking her sword to her hand, and set her feet and shield against the charge. 

The Lacerta didn’t try to bite her, though. It dug a claw into the ground and used its momentum to spin itself about, dropping to its side. She had only enough time to look to the right before the massive tail launched itself across the plains, slamming into her right side. 

Sumi’s world went white, then black. She was nothing for a few eternal moments, until the shock of cold water brought her back to awareness. 

Sumi had landed in one of the ponds. She tried to open her eyes, but the murky water revealed nothing. She failed to swim upward as the weight of her equipment dragged her down.

Her ears popped just as her feet touched down on the muddy bottom, startling her. Gathering her wits, she crouched low and then launched herself forward, trusting to blind luck that she was heading for the nearest shore. A second of sensationless floating later her knees hit a sloped bank, which she clung to desperately, crawling up it on all fours. Her lungs were burning, her mind hazy. 

She burst through the water, her first gasp of air sparking a coughing fit. Sumi curled up into a ball as her coughs wracked her, half-out of the water with only her shield to protect her.

Sumi was still sputtering when she managed to open her eyes, spotting Souta in the distance. He was leading a fighting retreat, snapping off arrow after arrow while the Lacerta dragged itself after him. A normal Monster would have long since tried to flee by now, but this one knew the prey in front of it was its last chance. It continued the hopeless assault. It would never catch Souta.

Sumi forced herself up, taking her sword in hand. She was eternally grateful that she’d not listened to Oji and had tied it to her wrist. The wilds would have been littered with lost weapons if she hadn’t. 

She unhooked a second potion bottle from her belt, the last one she’d brought with her. She gulped the sludge within it as she jogged towards Souta, keeping her pace slow enough that the drink would complete its work before she reached the Lacerta. 

The cool flush inside her intensified, wringing a contradictory shiver out of her overheated body. She hooked the bottle back onto her belt and lowered her head, breaking into a sprint. It was time to finish the Hunt. 

She reached the Monster right as it seemed to realize it truly couldn’t catch Souta, belatedly beginning to comprehend its limitations. It turned away, pulling itself towards the nearest watering hole to escape.

Sumi reached it just as it began to slide down the hill. She didn’t slow her pace in the slightest, leaping off the edge of the pond with a furious scream. She brought her sword overhead, gripped in both palms.

She slammed it down on the thin neck of the Lacerta right as she landed, once more driving it to the hilt. The Monster spasmed, bucking wildly to throw her off, but she didn’t relent. It tripped as it went down the hill, sliding on its side towards the water. Souta reached the lip of the depression then, and, seeing its exposed throat, began filling it with arrows. 

The creature’s spasms slowly weakened, its body moving less and less. A single front leg tried to drag itself towards the water, but it wasn’t enough to move its massive bulk. Sumi ripped her sword out of its back, clambering over its side to reach its neck.

A forest of arrows had been impaled into the white expanse. Exhausted, panting heavily, Sumi reached up with a hand and began ripping them out of its throat. Each freed arrow was followed by a river of near-black blood, coating the front of Sumi’s clothes. 

She didn’t care.

Sumi stabbed her own sword in with her free hand, cutting haphazardly in jagged lines as she continued to rip other arrows out. The creature’s fitful twitches slowed, then stopped. 

She was exhausted, but she wasn’t done yet. Sumi set a foot against its flesh, stabbing her sword higher up to use it as a handhold. She clambered up its sideways jaw until she could see its eyes, meeting them with her own. The half-lidded yellow orbs were still. Dead.

Sumi loosened her grip, falling backward into the muddy shore. Her sword was ripped out by the cord attached to her wrist to fall after her, so she had to roll to one side to avoid impaling herself. It thumped into the dirt behind her.

It was there, laying on her side covered in mud and gore, that she finally allowed herself to stop moving. 

She was so, so tired. 

Chapter Text

Souta slid down the hill, stopping next to her. Sumi didn’t acknowledge him, taking the moment to breathe. She could swear her lungs still burned, even if the potion long since should have healed any damage to them. The phantom sensation remained all the same.

“You doing alright?” Souta asked. Sumi gave him a limp thumbs up.

“Doing great, buddy. Just gonna go comatose here for a minute, catch my breath.”

“You should try getting hit less next time. That does wonders for me.”

Sumi rolled over, affixing him with a glare. “Half the reason you didn’t take any hits was because I was taking point. Why don’t we give you a shield next time and see how you do?”

“Hey, I still took some licks.” He lifted his chestplate up a bit, exposing through his chainmail a purple and yellow bruise that rippled across most of the right side of his body. “And let me tell you, it sucked. So I know at least a little bit how you’re feeling right now.”

“What’d it get you with?” 

“After you went down the first time it managed to take a chomp out of me. Nearly got through, actually. Arrow down the gullet convinced it to spit me up before my armor gave.”

“You survived a bite from that thing?” Sumi looked down at what remained of her armor. “I seriously need to get better equipment.”

Souta offered her a hand. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?” 

Sumi took it, letting herself be hauled to her feet. The Lacerta was laying on its side, its sixty foot length forming a wall ten feet high. Its jaws were half-opened, just touching the shoreline where its blood was beginning to pool. Sumi took a step and slipped on the muddy gore, dropping to a knee. 

Souta, behind her, fired off the green flare that signaled the conclusion of a successful Hunt. Hikoshi was the only one around to see it, of course, and she would have undoubtedly seen the whole thing from the Stellar, but Souta’s devotion to procedure was ever steadfast. 

Sumi looked around, searching for the Stellar to determine how far the Hunt had carried them. To her surprise she found it only a few hundred yards away, the fight having drawn closer than she was comfortable with to the vulnerable ship. They would have to be more careful in the future. 

It was close enough, in fact, that she could spot the shape of Hikoshi atop the envelope, watching them through Souta’s spyglass. The distinctive glint of the glass lowered, Hikoshi raising a hand to wave. Sumi returned it before returning to her work.

The process of carving the Lacerta was laborious. Its skin was so thick that her Hunter’s knife couldn’t cut all the way through, necessitating the use of her duller sword instead. But her sword wasn’t sharp enough to easily cut through the armored scutes, so Sumi had to begin each slice on the vulnerable underbelly and bring it upward. That meant that she was constantly crawling up and down the belly of the beast, thick vertical lines being dug across its stomach like tally marks. 

Sumi had to find the spot in the field where she’d been crushed by the Lacerta to retrieve her knife and ruined chestpiece, shuddering slightly at the sight of her body’s depression in the soil. That had been too close. She returned to the corpse with a renewed vigor to tear it apart.

She couldn’t cut through the thickest part of the scutes at all, knife or sword, so she had to trace the thin seams where they connected. She spent the first several hours just dragging her sword up and down the Monster, stopping only when she’d exposed enough muscle to begin cooking some meat. She had her first meal, then her second, before jogging back to the ship to offer some to Hikoshi. She didn’t stay to chat, more work ahead of her.

A herd of the horned deer-things made their way past the site of the kill, something that they didn’t mind at first. She and Souta let them investigate the kill leisurely, unconcerned with what the herbivores would do. That is, they were unconcerned until they spotted one bending down to rip chunks of exposed meat from the flank of the Lacerta. Its teeth weren’t sharp, but it shoved its snout in greedily nonetheless, coating its head and horns in black blood. That prompted them to run the herd off, unwilling to scavenge from a carcass after a thousand animals had swarmed it. Not to mention the fact that the thing had looked rather demonic, towering over her with black blood coating its spiral horns and distended cheeks while viscera trailed from its half open mouth. 

Eventually Sumi had stacked up several sheets of the black hide, the largest scutes of which were perhaps six inches across. She preferred those for her armor, since the joints between the pseudo-scales seemed a weak point. It was unlikely any Monster would have fine enough claws or teeth to take advantage of that, but she didn’t want the extra risk. 

The hide sheets were extraordinarily tough, so much so that she couldn’t bend them with her hands. She took as many of them as she could, exposing the entire spine of the Lacerta until she reached the tail. The meat across its whole body was proportionally thin, devoid of any fat reserves, but it would be more than enough to feed them for weeks once properly preserved. 

The spine was raised and bony, an exaggerated version of the crocodile skeletons she was familiar with. It seemed each vertebrae nearly had a fin rising from the top, long and hooked. Those distended through the skin in the mid-back, forming a distinct enough to serve as climbing steps. She wondered if it would be as prominent on any Lacerta that hadn’t been starving. 

She climbed on top of the creature and peeled its skin away, easier work on the sides where the armor was thinner. The ribs tapered down in size the farther from the spine they grew, until they were only a few fingers thick at the tip. She tried and failed to break off these pieces, which would be ideal for forming the structure of her armor. She could chip only the thinnest layer off the bones, nowhere close to exposing the marrow within or freeing a piece. An idea occurred to her, vague though it was. She moved along the ribs, exposing them just enough to chip at them and weaken the last foot or so. She’d have to talk to Hikoshi about it first, but she thought her idea might work. For now, other things were preoccupying her thoughts. 

The herd had not dispersed. Sumi watched them moving in the distance, circling the Lacerta’s corpse in a slow vortex. They nipped in occasionally, testing Sumi and Souta’s wariness. She threw rocks at them in response, or banged her sword and shield together. That got them to stutter back eventually, but they were growing bolder. They’d have to finish carving soon, unless they wanted to get swarmed. 

She left Souta with instructions to take as many of the Lacerta’s teeth as he could, which would be quite a number considering the three rows of ivory spikes they had available to them. Sumi jogged back to the ship in the meantime, scattering the herd around her. They were a lot taller when she was next to them. It felt unnatural to be looked down at by something that resembled a deer, especially when they had twisting horns that grew longer than a foot. She picked up the pace, ignoring their snuffling investigations of her. 

Hikoshi met her while dangling from the side of the envelope, only her ankles hooked into a rope to hold her upside down away from the leather lining. Sumi did her best not to worry about it, though having a conversation with someone twenty feet above her upside down proved rather distracting. 

“Think you could get the ship over to the Lacerta corpse?” Sumi asked.

“Not right now, I don’t think. The wind’s carrying us away from it.”

Sumi looked at the stalks of grass, which were swaying nigh imperceptibly. 

“What if we use the engine?”

Hikoshi flipped upright, sliding down the rope to drop next to Sumi. 

“You really want to give it a try already?”

“Why not? I can’t think of anything else to fix on it, and the wind’s calm right now. A low-power test seems perfect.”

“Okay, that makes sense.” Hikoshi’s eyes narrowed. “But why do you want the Stellar over by the Monster corpse?” 

Sumi did her best to look innocent. “Well, you know, I just had some ideas. There’s some parts Souta and I can’t get off, so I figured if I tied them to the Stellar and started the engine…”

“That-- sounds awesome, actually. Using my ship to rip apart a Monster corpse? Hell yeah.”

Sumi blinked. “You’re not worried about damaging anything?”

“I mean, I am, but it’d only be the engine. I didn’t even know I’d have that thing, and once it broke I never expected it to work again. We’re three layers deep on violated expectations here, why not add another?”

“Because the Stellar’s the first ship you’ve ever captained, and I imagine you’d want to keep it nice and shiny? You whined enough about me taking nails out and the off-color repairs on the hull. I didn’t expect you to be so gung-ho about another untested plan.”

“That’s because the other stuff didn’t make a good story. It doesn’t even matter if it works or not, just the fact that I tried to use my ship to gut a Monster will get me free drinks for life. Let’s do it.”

Sumi blew air through her teeth, the lack of an argument feeling strangely like a letdown. She’d been all ready to convince her to give it a shot, but Hikoshi was more eager than her. Hikoshi was already back in the ship, unlocking the trap door to the gas bags to give them the lift they needed. 

Sumi followed in after her, giving her a boost up into the envelope. She made a mental note to herself to fashion the door a ladder, so Hikoshi could climb up inside on her own. 

She felt the ship begin to react more to the slight breeze as it lightened, taking that as her cue to head for the back. She had to lift the door of the engine cubby, beginning the startup procedure that she’d grown familiar with. The throttle at the front of the ship was fully pulled back, and it seemed to be working properly. The engine rumbled to life slower than she’d ever seen it, pistons moving like an old man in the hours before a storm. Small spurts of steam leaked from the impromptu patch, but nothing significant enough for her to worry about. She tossed the trap door back down anyway, quickly retreating away from the ticking time bomb.

Sumi returned to the helm as the ship began to lift off the ground, its envelope catching the slight breeze. The Lacerta was ahead of them at the moment, at their 3 o’clock or so, and Hikoshi maneuvered their nose to face it accordingly. The breeze began pulling them away from the kill site. Hikoshi pushed the throttle forward ever so slightly. 

The propeller, Sumi could see, responded appropriately. After a few seconds of hesitation it began to speed up, chopping the air behind them. It still wasn’t enough to move them forward, but it was a start. She watched it carefully-- but from a safe distance-- as Hikoshi continued to push the throttle forwards. 

The steam engine’s rhythm gained a slight rattle, but nothing burst. The propeller responded sluggishly to Hikoshi’s requests, but it did respond. Their backward movement was halted, the propeller’s speed equal to the wind. 

Sumi saw Souta standing on the Lacerta’s jawline, shading his eyes to stare at the Stellar. Belatedly, she realized she should have told him her plan. It was too late now. He’d figure it out.

Hikoshi tapped the throttle, moving it little more than a half inch further. The Stellar began to move forward across the ground, which was about ten feet below them. They moved slower than a walking pace, but it was progress, and that’s all she cared about.

“How’s the engine doing?” Sumi asked.

“How would I know? It sounds different from before, but we’ve never done this. Was the patch working?”

“For the most part. A little bit of steam was leaking, but nothing too serious. I hope.”

“Encouraging.”

They continued their crawling pace towards the Lacerta. Hikoshi had to only occasionally tap the controls, correcting for minor changes in the wind. Crossing the few hundred yards between them and the Lacerta’s corpse took the better part of ten minutes, but Sumi felt triumphant when the Monster fell under their shadow. 

Hikoshi reduced the throttle after passing the creature, turning the ship to face the opposite direction, wind behind them. She let the wind push them until they had pulled alongside the corpse before setting the ship down. 

Sumi walked out of the Stellar with a triumphant grin, meeting Souta’s bemused expression.

“Nice of you to join me, I guess. Did Hikoshi get bored of being left out or something?”

“Nope. We’re going to use the Stellar to help us carve up the Monster.”

At that, his eyes widened. “In what capacity, exactly?” 

Sumi patted an exposed bone fondly. “I want some ribs, and I don’t think either of us can cut them off. We’re going to tie the ship’s docking ropes to them and snap ‘em off.”

“Does… Hikoshi know that?”

“She said it would be a good enough bar story that it’s worth trying.”

“Huh.” Souta slipped the latest tooth he’d severed into the pack at his feet, considering the Monster. “I’m starting to think we should have brought another Hunter with us on the trip, because that idea doesn’t sound too bad to me. The three of us need some kind of good influence.”

“Sending us together was the Guild’s fault, not ours. They get to deal with the consequences when we get back.”

“If we don’t rip the ship in half in the next few minutes, you mean?”

“There’s a lot of ‘ifs’ about this trip already, Souta. What’s one more?”

“The probable death of us?” 

“This will only kill the expensive one-of-a-kind prototype engine, I promise. Now let’s get to it.”

They set about tying the docking ropes to the Lacerta’s ribs, deciding on using three at a time. They reasoned that tying any more would distribute the force too much, essentially docking them to the corpse. Souta used one of the sharper teeth he’d taken from the Lacerta to chip further at the ribs, weakening them as best he could. They gave Hikoshi a thumbs up through the window when they’d finished preparing everything they could think of. 

The ship began to lift off the ground, control surfaces catching the wind. Hikoshi slowly increased the throttle, drawing the ropes taut. Sumi’s mind briefly flashed back to the time when she and her father had stretched a rope too far, the resulting snap more like an explosion than anything else. She subtly waddled backward to take cover behind the Lacerta’s jaws, peeking around its lips to watch.

Souta, apparently, had no such experiences with over-tensioned ropes, because he walked directly up to the ribs. They were bending slightly from the force, right at the weakened portion, which should have made him more nervous. It appeared that his actual reaction was impatience, because he pulled his bow off his back and pulled back to swing at the ribs.

“Wait!” Sumi shouted. He turned around to look at her. “At least put your helmet on.”

“Why?”

“Trust me. You don’t want that rope to snap in your face.”

He shrugged, but did as he was told. Then, helmet on, he pulled back for a swing.

He swung his bow underhanded, hitting the rib just at its thin tip. The rib snapped with an ear splitting CRACK, shooting upward towards the ship as if flung from a bow. The other two snapped in rapid succession immediately afterwards, showering the surrounding areas in chips of bone. 

She watched Hikoshi immediately adjust to the sudden untethering of the ship, propeller crawling to a stop as the control surfaces fluttered. It took her some time to come back around, dragging the bones in the grass the whole while. Sumi and Souta continued to loot the Lacerta corpse while they waited.

They repeated the process a number of times, each set of broken ribs taking several minutes to reset between. They managed to get several dozen teeth, some longer than a foot, others freshly grown and diminutive. 

It was during their last tooth collection run that Souta spotted something further down the Lacerta’s throat. He tried to point it out to Sumi, but she couldn’t distinguish anything. Instead of trying to show her, Souta dropped to all fours and began crawling down the creature’s gullet.

She didn’t follow him. She had done a lot as a Hunter so far, been covered in quite a lot of disgusting things, but this was a line that she was drawing in the sand. She refused to go down the throat of a Monster, full stop.

Souta returned a minute later holding a white tooth, fleshy root tendrils still attached. This tooth was different from the rest, though. It had no tip to speak of, its thin length coming to a rectangular end. Its sides were finely serrated, sharp as could be. Souta handed it to her with the same pride that her brother did when he gave her his latest captured bug. 

“There’s more back there. Some are even longer than that one. Think it would make a good sword?”

Sumi eyed the tooth, running a gauntlet thumb along its edge. The tooth sliced through the leather without resistance, nicking her skin underneath. She pulled it away, nursing the stinging wound. It felt like a paper cut. 

“How long is the biggest one?” Sumi asked. In answer, Souta dropped to crawl back up the Lacerta’s throat. He came back a minute later with a two-foot tooth, impossibly diverse varieties of grime covering every inch of his armor. Sumi even thought one splotch looked purple, of all things. 

“This is the biggest one I could find. They were in a ring all along its throat, attached to these thick muscle bands. It looked like they were normally folded down, but could be flexed upward. My guess is it's to help with digestion, since crocodiles can’t really chew things.”

“Maybe. We’d have to watch one eat to be sure.” She brought out her knife to scrape away the remaining flesh dangling from the tooth. “Certainly handy, though. I appreciate it.”

“Between that and the hide you should be geared up almost as nicely as me soon enough. Think there’s anything you can use instead of the wood on your shield? That’s the only thing you’ll still have to work on.”

Sumi eyed the corpse, thinking hard. Nothing about it was convenient for her shield, all the bones too large, the armored scutes too small. With the Tigrex’s armor piece protecting it she still felt reasonably safe, but Souta was right that the wooden base was a weak point. She’d have to keep her eye out. 

Hikoshi came back for another pass, and they returned to the routine of snapping the Lacerta’s ribs. The herd was slowly encroaching again, having initially been run off by the appearance of the Stellar. As they grew bolder, Sumi decided that they were far too aware of the advantage in numbers they held for her liking. They would have to wrap this up soon, before the animals realized they could easily overwhelm the two Hunters.

On the next run Sumi waved for Hikoshi to cut the engine, using the remaining ribs to anchor the ship. She and Souta began organizing their haul, using the plates of Lacerta hide as platforms to haul goods up to the ship. Sumi would lower a rope down on a winch mounted near the Stellar’s door, which they would tie to a load of looted supplies. It was only a few minutes before the only thing left to load was the Hunters themselves. 

Souta took a brief walk into a nearby pond, sinking up to his head and shaking himself to remove some of the grime. The blood that covered Sumi had long since soaked into her clothes, and no amount of pond water was going to change that. She undid the docking ropes after Souta had climbed aboard, clinging on to the last one as the ship began to pull away from the ground. Climbing it took some work, and quite a bit of concentration to ignore the receding ground, but she reached the ship without difficulty. 

She looked down to find the Lacerta’s corpse covered by a teeming mass of brown fur. The deer had surged forward the second the area was clear, climbing atop the sprawling corpse like ants conquering a rival mound. As she watched the mass of brown fur steadily grew darker, black blood and red gore thrown ecstatically into the air by the herd. She had to look away from the sight, involuntarily imagining herself still down there, another victim of the feeding frenzy. 

Sumi stayed on the side of the ship, keeping a hand firmly gripping the netting that ringed the hull beneath the windows. She had to wrap up the docking ropes before she could sidle along the wall and join her friends inside. 

Sumi entered into a chaotic mess. Hikoshi hadn’t brought the looted materials back to the cargo room, opting to toss them about the helm before hauling the next up. The only even vaguely organized items were the slabs of meat, which she’d at least taken the care to avoid dumping on the floor. Sumi had to kick away a rolling tooth when she shut the door behind her. 

“Really? Didn’t even try to keep things sensible?”

“I don’t know what half of this stuff is, that’s your job. I just fly the ship.”

“I’m pretty sure you know it doesn’t go in the helm, though.”

“Why not? I’m not sure if the cargo room even has enough room. You two are going to have to get creative.”

Sumi took note of the pointed use of ‘you two’. “So you’re not going to help?”

“Oh, sorry babe,” Hikoshi said without a drop of sincerity. She patted the wheel. “I’m stuck flying the ship. It takes a lot of concentration, you know, so I can’t let up.” As she said that she let go of the wheel, spinning around in her chair to begin documenting something on the desk map behind her. 

Sumi rolled her eyes. 

“Keep an eye out for a good landing spot. I’ve got a lot of work to do, and not a lot of room to do it.”

“What’re you looking for?” Hikoshi asked. “If it’s just open space, we’ve got plenty of that here.”

“Not just open space. Somewhere we can stay for a few days, so ideally with a bit of a natural barrier. If either of you want me to smith you things, it’ll also have to be somewhere where I can access some material. Maybe if you see a cave or something? We could block up the entrance easily enough, get to work in there.”

“I’ll keep an eye out.” She looked behind Sumi, crinkling her nose at Souta. “By the way, you need to get out of that crap. You’re leaking pond-blood-vomit all over my ship. And you too, Sumi.”

Sotua glanced up from where he was sifting through the collected materials, then looked down at himself. A puddle of indeterminate origin was staining the deck beneath him, spreading steadily. 

“Huh.” He said. “I guess muddy pond water doesn’t work great for washing clothes. Who would have thought it?” 

Sumi looked down at herself. The black blood had stained the entirety of her shirt, front and back. Coagulated flecks of it were flaking off her exposed skin every time she moved. She stepped up to one of the windows, catching a glimpse of her reflection. Blood and bits of flesh were spattered throughout her hair, strands of which were standing up at odd angles. She looked like she’d been hit by lightning, her skin turned to charcoal. 

Naturally, she turned to Hikoshi, opening her arms wide.

“But I’m just so glad to be back safe!” Her voice was sickly sweet as she approached Hikoshi. “C’mon, give me a hug. I missed you!”

Hikoshi whipped out a rib bone, holding it wardingley between them. 

“Don’t you dare.”

“It won’t be that bad. You’ve got other clothes. C’mere.”

“The nearest shower is five hundred miles from here. If you get any closer I’m bashing your skull in.”

Undetected, Souta stepped up behind Hikoshi to affectionately rub a hand through her curled hair. 

“Your girlfriend’s just trying to be--” 

He was cut off by the bang of the rib bone connecting with the side of his helmet, knocking his head to the side. The abruptness of it startled a barking laugh out of Sumi.

“Ow! What the hell, girl?” Souta demanded, rubbing the side of his temple. Hikoshi’s eyes only narrowed.

“That didn’t hurt you.” 

“Sure, but it was still loud!”

“Then I’d recommend both of you get away from me before I do it again.”

Sumi reached a hand out. “But I know you wouldn’t do it to little old--”

The rib bone cracked over her gauntlet, knocking her hand away. Hikoshi brought it back up in something vaguely resembling a fencer’s pose.

“Only because you don’t have a helmet on. Now get out of my space until you get that crap off of you.”

Sumi raised her hands in mock surrender, backing away. Hikoshi didn’t like blood, it seemed. She could respect that, even if she was going to file it away for future teasing. If she thought she could work with-- and date-- a Hunter and end up entirely free of blood she was going to be surprised.

Chapter Text

They landed before the sun forced them to, a convenient grove of trees breaking up the cratered landscape too tempting to pass up. Hikoshi practically salivated at the thought of a decent mooring to spare the hull further strain.

More aberrations about the strange oasis revealed themselves as the Stellar slid down the currents to land. The majority of the craters surrounding the grove were devoid of water, empty pits covered in varieties of weeds and bushes, and some of the craters within the actual forest were too dark to be just hidden in shadow. The pits puzzled Sumi enough to wish she had Souta’s spyglass, but she’d be seeing them soon enough. 

Hikoshi decided to avoid the exposed exterior of the forest edge, using the engine to carve a twisting downward spiral above the center of the forest. It wasn’t large, perhaps a square mile or so, but it provided more protection than the open fields. 

Sumi and Souta threw the docking lines before hopping out of the ship. Hikoshi held the Stellar in position with careful feathering of the controls and throttle, giving them time to tie seven of the ropes to the largest trunks they could reach. It was overkill, perhaps, but they were leaving nothing to chance after the desert storm. 

The ship’s lowering was met with a storm of birds scattering from the treetops, a collage of species that Sumi had never seen before. After so long spent in the wild Sumi had realized she was becoming more surprised to find a familiar species than she was to find a new one, and this leafy oasis was not an exception.

The trees themselves were impressively diverse for such a small space, a half-dozen varieties represented in her first glances. The underbrush was thick and tangled, dead limbs tied together by knots of spiked vines that crawled over everything they could reach. She had to use her sword to hack away a clearing, Souta using the larger logs she cut to construct a stand to smoke their food. 

Hikoshi slid down an anchor line some time later with the first load of meat stuffed in a burlap bag. Souta had a fire going already, so the two of them began the process of salting and drying the food. Sumi left them to it, deciding to explore the small forest a bit herself.

She was looking for one of the dark craters, curiosity getting the better of her. The cluttered forest floor was a tiring obstacle to navigate, particularly only a few hours after a Hunt, but she made do. She found occasional stumps poking through the matted leaves that she could use as a convenient stepping stone to leap across the terrain. She cut large and obvious marks into the trees she passed, even if she could have easily looked for the Stellar’s envelope in the distance to find her way back. Some of Souta's caution had rubbed off on her, it seemed.

The forest was so dense that it reminded her of home in some respects. There was little humidity to speak of and few paths forged through the growth, but the same sense of claustrophobia suffused the tightly-knit grove. The leaves were too few to coat her in the familiar twilight she’d known at home, and none of the creatures skittering past were familiar, but she felt  comforted all the same. Someone who’d grown up here would have known a life not too dissimilar to her own, once she’d become a Hunter.

She eventually found what she was looking for. One of the crater pits that had been little more than a black void from above revealed itself to be just that, a formless hole in the ground. It was the entrance to a cave, steep and ominous. The dirt quickly became bare stone as it sloped down, the angle of descent sharp enough that she doubted she would’ve been able to climb out unassisted. The thought of descending immediately bubbled up in her mind, but more reasonable processes prevailed. She’d return to it later, with Souta, to explore. 

She made her way back to the camp, finding Souta and Hikoshi widening the clearing. Souta had erected a tent, apparently intending to sleep off the ship, while Hikoshi had brought down the books Souta had lent her. Three makeshift chairs, little more than a few planks of wood impaled in the ground to let them lean back without falling over, surrounded a stone-ringed campfire. Lacerta meat sizzled on long poles above the fire, filling the air with an intoxicating aroma. 

Sumi snuck a piece of freshly charred meat, savoring the flavor despite the burning sting it brought to her tongue. Hikoshi and Souta had their own projects, so she decided to begin on hers. 

She brought down several selections of their loot from the Lacerta, the ones that she’d already identified as being particularly useful. Arranging them around the clearing to declare her workspace, she began to plan. 

Working with Monster materials, she had learned, was difficult. Every species had their own eccentricities, no two teeth or claws alike. Some practically ignited at the touch of a spark, others couldn’t be melted by throwing them into lava. She didn’t know if there was any semblance of reason to it; she’d yet to find a way to identify how the organic material would respond without testing it.

The Lacerta hide, it seemed, was fairly resistant to damage from flames, though heat was transferred through it easily enough. It resisted both sharp and dull blows particularly well, practically the equal of Souta’s Rathalos carapace in that the test fruit she’d placed beneath it was hardly bruised by repeated strikes. Her initial prediction of its difficulties as a crafting material remained true, the black scutes refusing to bend unless subjected to incredible force. She was fortunate enough that she and Souta could generate that force, but it was a painstaking process. The only upside to that was the way the hide retained its shape.

It was reluctant to reform itself once bent, remaining curled up when they’d managed to roll one small piece into a semi-circle. A repeat barrage of tests confirmed that taking its new shape hadn’t affected its sturdiness. She moved on to other samples. 

The Lacerta’s teeth were long and dull, relying on the incredible pressure generated by their owner’s jaws to pierce their prey. Nothing besides her knife could chip them in the slightest, and even then the damage seemed borderline cosmetic. She organized her tooth collection by length and degree of curvature, hoping to reinforce the structure of her armor with them. With the Lacerta hide as malleable as it was she didn’t want a repeat of her earlier armor’s failure, crushing her with its own deformed shape. 

The throat-teeth were the toughest to incorporate into her plans. She had three of them, the longest thirty inches of “blade” while the other pair were a few inches shy of two feet in length. They were still attached to the root, but a quick test of her knife found the enamel easy enough to cut. Most of a Monster that wasn’t directly exposed to the world was fragile, a double-edged sword when one wanted to use some conveniently shaped anatomy that proved too brittle for use. 

She carved away the root in thin layers, whittling the base of the serrated tooth into a thin tang. She had to hold the sharp side incredibly carefully, even the steel of her gauntlets proving to be little protection. If she was exceptionally cautious she could lightly tap the sharp edge without being cut, but drawing it even slightly across a surface was a surefire way for it to dig in. The tooth’s serrations seemed inherently hungry, pulling whatever they cut deeper into their maw. Thin lines of blood crisscrossed her fingers already, with more likely to follow before her work was done. She had no idea how she was going to make a sheath for the thing.

Her selection for the handle was obvious, once given thought. Many of the Lacerta’s more common teeth were just the right size for her hand, and after a brief perusing of the collection she found one that fit perfectly in her palm. She just needed a way to drill the hole to insert the tang. 

She settled on the oddly circular method of tying a smaller tooth to a fire bow drill, spinning the smaller tooth rapidly enough to wear away the larger’s core. It was time consuming, repetitive, and effective. Sumi slipped the blade’s tang into the tooth some few hours later, the fit tight enough that pulling it back out again was a struggle. Now all she needed was a crossguard and the glue to hold it all together. 

She didn’t have to make her own glue, luckily. Her small collection of smithing odds-and-ends had been stored in her personal trunk, not with the kit that Souta had tossed overboard. The crossguard was trickier, though. She eventually settled on a piece of rib, one that had broken too short to be of use for her armor. It was six inches long and fairly curved, forming a gentle semi-circle that would deflect any attack sliding down the blade. She carved a hole through it with the blade itself, ensuring a good fit, then soaked the tang in glue and slipped it into the handle.

The sword was something to be proud of, she decided. Souta and Hikoshi came to look at it while it was drying on the stump she’d used for a working bench.

“Looks nasty.” Hikoshi judged.

“As in gross, or intimidating?”

“Bit of both. I definitely don’t want to get stabbed with it.”

Souta pointed at the tip of the blade. “You couldn’t get stabbed with it. It’s got a flat top, like an executioner’s sword.”

“How do you know what one of those looks like?” Sumi asked.

“By watching executions? I forget how much of a country girl you are sometimes.”

“People go to watch those?”

“Sometimes you’re required to, if the crime was awful enough. Supposed to be a warning to anyone else thinking of trying the same thing.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yeah, like your sword.” He tapped a fingernail against the dull tip. “How are you going to stab anything with that?”

“I won’t, I guess.”

“That seems like a pretty big problem for a short sword.”

“It’s only a short sword to you. That’s a thirty inch blade with a palm-and-a-half handle, which makes it more than half my height.”

“Okay, sure, but you still can’t stab anything with it.”

Sumi put a hand on her hip and gave him a blank look. “Alright, then. Let’s see you find something that can break that tooth. Because I’d have to grind it, snap it, or do something else to it to add a tip.” Souta crouched in front of the sword, as if actually considering it. He crouched there for quite a while, in fact. Silently.

“Yeah, you can’t. But as soon as you figure it out, let me know, because it’d be real handy. In the meantime I’ll ask you to stop making jokes about the length of my sword. I’ve got a lot more ammo than you do in that department, anyway.”

Hikoshi’s eyebrows shot up. “Have you seen his--”

“No!” Sumi and Souta shouted simultaneously. Sumi hadn't expected that joke to backfire so quickly.

Hikoshi shrugged, palms up. “Well, in my defense, you were acting like you knew what you were talking about, so I assumed--”

“Why in the world would I have seen that? When would that have happened?”

“I mean, you two have come back from Hunts with your clothes pretty torn up before.”

Souta stepped away, throwing his hands in the air. “Alright, conversation’s over everyone! Time to talk about, or do, or go anywhere else! I’m going to climb a tree or something. See you once it gets dark.”

Souta promptly shimmied up a tree, using the lower-hanging branches as monkey bars to avoid the underbrush. The foliage covered him in minutes. 

Sumi spent the rest of the evening waiting for her sword to finish drying while sitting in Hikoshi’s lap, feet roasting by the fire. She kept her helmet and old weapon close, of course, but it wasn’t likely that they’d get attacked by anything that night. Large Monsters clearly didn’t come here, judging by the lack of trails, and most common animals would be spooked away by the fire. They could afford to relax.

Hikoshi used the waning daylight to read through the entries Souta had organized for her, a small stack of age-crackled leather books next to her. Sumi read along, vaguely, but she spent as much time as anything else mentally working through her plan for her Lacerta armor. Occasionally Hikoshi would ask her a question, most of which she knew the answer to. Some were too specific, or not mentioned elsewhere in the book, and would have to wait for Souta to return before being answered, but she prided herself on being able to recall the majority from memory. 

It seemed Hikoshi was most fascinated by the species of Monsters that shouldn’t be able to fly, but could. Things like Diablos, Paolumu, and the unnamed thing they’d seen in the symmetrical forest captured her imagination more than anything else.

“What does it mean when they say a Rathian ‘shouldn’t be able to fly'?” Hikoshi asked after the third time the statement appeared. “I’ve seen them fly. You’ve seen them fly. They do it all the time, and they seem pretty good at it.”

“No one’s saying they can’t fly, just that it seems like they shouldn’t be able to. Think of most birds you’ve ever seen, or even things like bats and bugs.”

“Yeah?”

“Their wings are massive, bigger than their body by a good few multiples. They’ve got hollow bones, or no bones at all, and feathers to help them get lift. The bigger the body, the bigger the wings, and the wings have to get big faster than the body. Monsters don’t follow those rules.”

“I seem to recall the Rathian having pretty massive wings.”

“But not big enough. They’re covered in armored scales, with huge legs and thick muscles. Something that heavy should have wings the size of my village to take off, according to the books. But they don’t, and they fly anyway.”

“How?”

Sumi shrugged, leaning back against Hikoshi’s chest to look up at her. “Find out and you’ll probably land yourself a big fat award from the Guild. No one knows.”

Hikoshi looked at the book with mild disgust, closing it. “So you’re telling me I won’t be able to do the same thing with my ship?”

“Not without some major breakthroughs, at least.” Sumi hummed, suppressing a smile. “Maybe you could paint it like a sexy Rathian, get a Rathalos hot and bothered. Raise yourself some airship-wyvern hybrids as pack animals.”

“I… really don’t like that mental image. Can you imagine being on the Stellar, looking out the back window, and seeing the wrong end of a Rathalos?”

Sumi squeezed her eyes shut. “Okay, yeah, I don’t like that either. Guess we’ll have to stick with boring hydrogen like the rest of them.”

Hikoshi sighed, but picked up the next book and continued reading anyway. Sumi wiggled deeper into her lap, armor plans and designs growing vaguer by the minute as her mind drifted towards sleep. Eventually Hikoshi woke her, night having fallen. The embers of the fire were fading, and Souta had retired to his tent. Sumi followed Hikoshi back up the ropes to the Stellar, ready for some proper sleep, without wandering hands.

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When she went to her hammock that night, she was thinking of her armor. When she woke up and ate, she was thinking of her armor. As Sumi descended from the Stellar, shimmying down a rope lit by the rising sun, thoughts of pressure tolerances and binding coefficients occupied her mind. 

This felt different from making her sword. She prepared her working area with a precision that bordered on ritualistic, intrinsically knowing that each piece around her belonged in a certain location.

Souta came down at some point, as did Hikoshi, but Sumi wasn’t sure exactly when. It could have been when she was preparing the site, or it could have been when she was working on the armor itself. The course of the day blended together as her hands carried her from task to task.

The Lacerta’s bones fell into shape, tips of ribs bound together to be the cage that would protect her core. Diluted fat from the beast, heated to a liquid, swirled alongside the resin of an ancient jungle tree. She held a piece of coal in her palm above the cast iron bowl, slowly tightening her grip. It cracked and flaked in her hand, a long stick in her other mixing the drifting dust in slowly, steadily. 

Strings of white tendons were lathered in glue, wound in an intricate weave until the misshapen rib cage was as resolute as it had been in life. Thick strips of black hide were layered above the cage, overlapping in the slightest fashion to hide the tendons that bound them together. It became a cascading fall of segmented armor that wrapped her from the shoulders down. 

Her legs became protected by splints, curved teeth forming the base that the thinner black hide was looped around. Her knees and shoulders were covered by segmented fragments of spinal column, affixed to thin strips of leather beneath. Her feet she covered like moccasins, though their sides rose to her mid-calf instead of the ankle. Common leather, tanned from bulls, softened the inside.

She slipped the helmet on, feeling its fit. It had the look of a flexible cap, as if it were winter apparel that fell down to her neck, but the warped leather was sturdier than stone. She craned her head around, eyes unfocused, and found her movement unrestricted. A second piece rose from below, covering her chin, lips, and nose, a thin gap open for her eyes. It couldn’t be moved, but she wouldn’t be wearing it anywhere she needed to be seen. Her breath was hot on her lips beneath the helmet.

Scutes of rippling variety rolled up and down her arms, flexing alongside her fingers and joints. She rolled her wrist, watching for any gaps in the protection. Her skin remained unseen, the leather underneath hiding even the smallest openings. 

The armor of her legs was thinner, by necessity, to allow for movement. She compensated for this with a thick fauld, a heavy slab that dangled loosely from her waist to her knees, placed in front and behind her. Now only an attack from below could reach the thinnest parts of her armor, something she wouldn’t allow. 

She picked up her sword, slipping it into the loop on her hip. She hadn’t found anything that could withstand its cut, so it was secured only by a ring at the crossguard and her own caution. Anything it grazed would be pulled in and cut further, a dangerous attribute for a free swinging blade. 

She bounced on the tips of her toes, feeling light, like she was wearing nothing at all. No, that wasn’t right. She felt lighter than she ever had before. She moved through the clearing, heading for a tree. She gripped a low branch with a single hand and hauled herself upward, finding enough momentum to fling herself to the next handhold. A feral grin split her face as she flung herself up again, wind whistling dully past her helmeted ears. She reached the top of the tree in moments, twenty feet above the ground, and let her speed carry her up past the canopy.

She hung in the hair for a time, the small grove spread before her. In every direction around her the landscape curved up and away, a gentle rise that continued for miles.

Sumi fell back down, limbs and leaves snapping painlessly against her armor as she crashed to the ground. She hit hard, a shock jolting through her legs, but nothing more. This was the moment that the tension within her finally burst into a bubbling laugh, ecstatic and relieved. She had her armor, a true set of Hunter’s armor. It creaked as she flexed it, the glue drying into its final shape, but it was done. She had done it.

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The rest of the world slipped back into focus, an unfamiliar lens removed from her eyes. The hour was late, the shadows lengthening. She was alone in the clearing with the discarded remnants of her work, leftover tools and bits of viscera dropped thoughtlessly in the dirt when they were no longer of use to her. Sumi didn’t bother to clean a thing, too eager to show off.

Sumi climbed back up to the Stellar, the ascent easier than it had ever been. The difference was something she could only attribute to the strange avian Monster’s feathers she’d layered within her breastplate. The wind rose for a moment, tugging at the rope, but she barely felt it affect her. The pressure ran past her lighter than water.

She pulled herself into the cabin where Souta and Hikoshi were sitting. Hikoshi was reading, Souta sketching, and both jumped and looked up at her, surprised by her sudden appearance. It occurred to Sumi that she had no idea what she was actually going to say about her new armor. They stared at her expectantly.

She did what came naturally, bringing her arms up in a flex while widening her stance. 

“Check it out, bitches!”

Souta burst into laughter while Hikoshi groaned, rolling her eyes. Sumi dropped her arms and laughed at herself, walking into the helm properly. Souta stood to inspect her work, so she obligingly spread out and slowly spun, giving him a good look.

“Damn, girl. Can’t say I’ve seen anyone’s armor look like this before.”

“That’s because their gear wasn’t made by me. I’ve got my own style, I go my own way.”

“Apparently.” Souta hummed, inspecting her. He tapped at different parts, wiggling them to see how they fit. The glue had dried fast enough that Sumi didn’t mind. Hikoshi came over to inspect it herself. 

“Is it as good as Souta’s armor?”

“I don’t know. It’s more stylish, at the very least.”

He flicked her shoulder. “You’re delusional.”

“Leather’s in style these days, you know. Carapace is so last year.”

“Somehow I doubt you got that fashion conscious from a few days in Narrowstrait, but even if that were true I’m still ahead of you. Mine’s got actual variety to its color; it’s not all black. You look like you’re going to a funeral instead of a Hunt.”

Sumi haughtily tossed her head, pretending to examine the fingernails hidden by her gauntlets. “It’s only fair. Every Hunt I go on is a funeral for a Monster.” Souta groaned, head rolling away from her. Sumi was grinning wildly under the helmet, but he couldn’t see anything aside from her eyes. 

“Look at this,” Souta said to Hikoshi, pointing at Sumi. “All it took was one new outfit to get her this cocky. I’m glad you two didn’t go clothes shopping in the city, because I don’t think I would have been able to deal with this version of Sumi for the whole trip.”

“Like you’ve got room to talk,” Hikoshi thumped him. “You’ve had the same armor on this entire trip. I’m not even sure if you own normal clothes.”

“I own plenty of clothes. What do you think I’m wearing under here?”

“Honestly, I wouldn’t have been surprised if you were naked.”

Sumi winced at the suggestion. “I don’t think anyone wants to be naked in armor. Too many places to get pinched.”

“Especially for me, because--” Souta began before Sumi socked him in his armored abdomen. It didn’t hurt, of course, but he was still doubled over by it, the unfortunate joke halted in its tracks. Sumi clapped her hands together.

“Alright, enough bragging. I want to do something with this armor, and we’ve still got a few hours of daylight left. I found a cave not too far from here, Souta. Want to go see what’s in it?”

“How big is it?”

“The entrance is about the size of one of the ponds, but it kept going down at a pretty steep angle until I couldn’t see anything else. I figure it might be worthwhile to see if we can find anything useful. Hopefully iron or something so we can fix up the ship.”

Hikoshi crossed her arms. “You mean to replace all the things you two have broken?”

Sumi waved the accusation away. “Semantics. You ready to go, Souta?”

“Absolutely. I’ve been bored out of my mind up here waiting for you to get done.”

“Didn’t you come down at some point?”

Souta and Hikoshi shared a look. Hikoshi snorted.

“Several times. You didn’t even look at me when I offered you lunch, which was bizarre. If you weren’t moving I’d have worried you were comatose.”

“I was… focused.”

“You were obsessed. Hopefully you’ll never start a project that takes long enough for you to starve to death. I’ll have to get Souta to tie you down so we can force-feed you.” 

Sumi’s lips curved at the corner. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”

Souta did his best impression of a cat hacking up a hairball, moving toward the door. “Let’s go check out your cave, Sumi. I need to get out of here before I vomit.”

Chapter Text

Souta followed Sumi from above, preferring to scramble through the trees. She didn’t know if his way of travel was better than her own, because it seemed they both struggled. She would occasionally miss a leap, ensnaring herself in the thorny vines, while Souta often found himself at a gap in the canopy that forced him to detour around. They followed Sumi’s marks back to the tree in lopsided fashion, starts and stops turning the short journey long.

They did reach it before the day was over, the low-set sun being hidden behind a curtain of encroaching gray clouds. It looked like it would rain tonight, she guessed. Souta followed her to the lip of the cave, the rocky descent as steep as it was smooth. The gap yawned on for a hundred undeviating feet and likely beyond, the shadows growing too deep to reveal anything further. 

“How far do you think it goes?” Sumi asked.

“Don’t know. I haven’t spent much time in caves. Some Hunters specialize in them, but tight spaces were never my thing.”

“This one hardly looks like a tight squeeze.”

“Yeah, it’s odd. Most caves I’ve seen had entrances that were small cracks, opening up further down, or great big mouths that split into a million little crevices. This is just… a tube.”

“Add it to our ever-growing list of unexplained phenomena. Ready to head down?”

“Why not?” Souta answered, rolling his shoulders. “But I reserve the right to head out of there as soon as it gets too cramped.”

“Got it. You reserve the right to chicken out.”

“Ah, shut it.” 

Sumi passed him, cautiously scooting down the ramp. It was steep enough that she had to do little more than shuffle her boots to let herself slide forward, arms spread for balance. 

Souta chose a different method. She heard his armored footsteps clank up in a light jog, followed by a terrible scraping noise. Souta shot past her with a whoop, spinning slightly as he slid on his back into the cave. Sparks bounced around him as he fell away, bringing out a flare from a belt pocket. Lighting it only required scraping the top against the stone shooting past him.

Sumi watched his smoke-hazed form slide into the distance and sighed, resigning herself. She dropped into a sitting position, pushing off with her hands.

The humid stone immediately slid away beneath her, the weight of her armor pulling her down into the earth. As she descended the ground grew wetter, slimier, and her slide picked up speed. Soon Souta was no longer far ahead of her, but feet away, and then she passed him entirely, skating past him into the impenetrable darkness.

She panicked slightly, dropping into a full-body slide like Souta had used. It did little to slow her. She tried to spread her palms on the ground, hoping to claw herself to a stop, but her gauntlets were made of the same Lacerta hide that the rest of her armor was. Drops of water barely clung to her at all, flicked off by the breeze as if the surface was actively repelling them. 

The air had been cooler in the cave than above for a time, but as she fell ever deeper, it began to grow warmer around her. Soon it was uncomfortably hot. 

When she was entirely alone in the darkness, Souta a distant star above her, she gave up. She didn’t know if she’d meet a sudden wall, endless drop, or keep sliding until she starved to death, but none were appealing. She pulled her sword from its belt loop and shoved it into the rocks to arrest her fall.

She had, of course, forgotten that her new weapon lacked a stabbing point, and it bounced off uselessly. She adjusted her hand and let the serrations catch on the pebbled surface, which worked far better than expected.

As soon as the blade bit into the stone she felt a sudden lurch, the sword trying to wrench itself out of her hands. It carved down into the stone voraciously, sinking to the hilt in a split second. If it wasn’t for her armor holding her arm in place she worried she’d have wrenched it out of the socket with how sudden her stop was, knocking the breath out of her. She dangled for a moment, gasping.

Sumi was pinned in place by the blade. She didn’t dare pull it loose, worried her fall would start again. Souta’s distant light grew brighter and brighter, until, finally, he caught up with her. He slowed to a stop easily, digging in with heel and hands to come to a rest next to her.

“You good, Sumi?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Lesson learned, though: my armor likes to go fast.”

“Apparently.” He held up his flare, surveying their surroundings. The cave had widened further, the roof out of sight. “How deep do you think we are?”

“How would I know? I might as well have been in free-fall.”

“Let’s hope you weren’t that fast. Climbing back up is going to suck enough as it is.”

Sumi carefully stood, keeping one hand on the hilt of her sword for balance. It seemed the soles of her moccasin-boots didn’t share the same frictionless properties of the rest of her armor, for which she was thankful. As her eyes adjusted to the dark she noticed something further down the cave.

“Hey, Souta. Do you see that?” She pointed at a glimmering light, faint and pale. He squinted, moving the flare behind himself to darken the area. 

“I think so. Little dot, glowing in the dark?”

“Exactly. Looks a little pink to me. I wonder if someone else has been down here?” 

Souta scratched his nose, thinking. “Doubt it. It’s not flickering like a torch would. Let’s get closer.”

They both stood, carefully shuffling downward. Sumi angled herself towards the nearest wall, keeping a hand on it for stability. Her sword never left her hand, ready to arrest her fall as soon as it was necessary. 

The light came into focus fairly quickly, gaining definition as a vaguely pink crystal set into the wall. It reminded her of quartz. Clear, but tinged with just enough pink to give it a softer feel than harsh white. 

“Rose quartz.” Souta noted. “That’s a good sign. Probably iron nearby.”

“How do you figure?” Sumi asked. 

“Your dad never taught you that? Rose quartz gets its pink from iron contamination. Colony prospectors use it as an indication for where an iron mine can be opened.”

“I had no idea. Our village never had a local mine. All our iron was bought from the caravans.”

“Well, the more you-- oh, watch your step.” Souta had come to a stop about twenty feet before the quartz, pointing down. A steep drop had appeared a few feet ahead of him, deep enough that the flare’s light didn’t illuminate the bottom. Sumi leaned forward, peering over the edge.

“Good thing I decided to stop.”

“I’ll say.” 

Souta pulled a piece of scrap paper from one of his journals and touched its edge to his flare, setting it alight. He dropped the burning paper over the edge, watching it flutter. It took a long time to fall, burnt to mere embers by the time it reached the bottom, but the glowing coals were enough to judge the distance. The drop was only thirty feet or so, far from lethal in their Hunter’s gear. Considering the speed she’d been going, though, she was still glad she hadn’t sailed off the edge.

Sumi’s attention returned to the crystal. “What do you think it is?” 

“Dunno. Some of the records of old colony attempts past the southern mountains mentioned crystal lighting, but I’d always assumed they meant lanterns put behind colored crystals. Guess it was more literal than that.”

“Let’s get a closer look.”

Sumi hopped off the ledge, running a hand along the rock wall to straighten her fall. She’d already fallen this far when testing her armor, so she wasn’t concerned. Souta swore quietly as she did so, though, so she guessed he hadn’t gotten the memo.

She hit the ground with a thud, knees bent to absorb the impact. She hadn’t lit a flare of her own, so only the twin dots of Souta’s flare and the crystal above were visible to her. Souta couldn’t see her either, but he waved in her general direction.

“Alright, I’m tossing the flare down. Make sure my landing zone’s clear.”

Souta chucked the flare down vaguely in Sumi’s direction. She had to sidestep a few feet, but she caught it. The ground around her lit up, proving itself to be much rougher than the tunnel they’d used as an entrance. The floor was pitted and marked, a web of cracks splitting beneath her. 

Souta took a deep breath and leaped forward, arms pinwheeling through the air. He hit the ground with a loud clang, tucking into a roll. He bounced up to his feet at the edge of the flare’s circle in a neat bow, applauding himself and answering an imaginary crowd’s cheers.

“Thank you, thank you. Yes, it’s very impressive, I know.”

“I didn’t have to roll,” Sumi reminded him. 

“That’s because you hogged all the fancy feathers. Now give me my flare back.”

She tossed it to him, walking towards the side of the cave that held the crystal. It was thirty feet above them, about even with the lip of the tunnel. When she drew near the wall Sumi noticed other glowing surfaces, too faint to have been made out from afar. She ran her glove along them, feeling the bumps and edges of their crystalline surfaces.

“Hey, Souta, leave the flare over there for a minute and come check this out. There’s more crystals.”

Souta obliged, setting his flare down so only the barest edge of its light reached the far wall. Sumi’s eyes continued to adjust to the dark, spotting more and more of the faint glows as she craned her neck. The wall was nearly covered, more crystal exposed than stone. 

“These are weird,” Sumi whispered, then realized at least that much was obvious. She explained further. “Most crystals I’ve seen growing in the wild are lopsided and spiky, not smooth. These almost look like a jeweler’s worked on them.”

“Yeah, that’s the weird part. Not the fact that they’re, ya know, glowing.” Souta leaned closer, tilting his helmet up to get a better view. “Some of them look like different colors to me. Purple, pink, white.” He pointed to different crystals as he said each color. Sumi could see what he meant.

“I want to get a better look at the bright one. Give me a boost?”

“I know I’m taller than you by a whole lot, Sumi, but I don’t think I can throw you thirty feet straight up.”

“We’ll see. This new armor has me pretty light.”

Sumi backed away from the wall, methodically securing her belt and tools before slipping her Hunter’s knife into her left hand. Souta crouched down, fingers locked together for her to place her foot in. She got a running start and jumped into his hands, adding her own leap to his toss.

Sumi sailed up the wall, arcing gracefully in much the same way the mysterious Monster had. She reached the apex of her leap about twenty feet above where she’d started and stabbed her knife into the wall, earning herself a handhold. The crystal was ten feet above her, bright enough to give the slightest bit of definition to the wall in front of her. She felt for natural handholds and didn’t find any.

Sumi unsheathed her sword and held it in her right hand, pommel facing upward. Getting it to cut into the wall was awkward, requiring a sideways sawing motion to get it started, but she eventually found herself a method to begin scaling the wall by using the two blades like ice picks. She reached the crystal in short order.

She’d expected the crystal to be too bright to look at this closely, but it wasn’t. The light seemed to originate from deep within, no larger than the head of a needle at its core. It was set into the wall much like the others had been, but it had few neighbors to the side and above it. It seemed the crystals had begun at the bottom and worked their way upward, eventually reaching this height. 

Sumi slipped a gauntlet off, tucking it under the arm that was holding her in place. She wanted to see if it was warm to the touch.

She pressed a fingertip to it, gently, ready to pull away if it burned her. The crystal didn’t feel warm in the slightest, to her slight surprise, but it was distinctly slimy. A clear mucus coated its surface, thick and sticky. She pulled her finger away, shaking the slime free. She waited for a moment to see if she felt any burning or stinging, wondering if the crystal was some kind of strange product of an acidic reaction, but nothing besides a mild disgust filled her. 

“What’s it like?” Souta called up.

“Cold and slimy.” She answered, switching her weight from her knife to her sword so she could pull the dagger out of the wall.”

“Slimy?” Souta confirmed. Sumi grunted. “Is the rest of the wall slimy, or just the crystal?”

She touched the space beside the crystal, finding it dry besides the drops of condensed humidity. “No, just the crystal. Try yours down there, see if they’re slimy.”

She heard the sound of Souta’s gauntlet being discarded, clanking to the ground. A moment later, he answered.

“Not really. Maybe just the slightest bit, but it could be my imagination.”

Sumi acknowledged him only vaguely, focused on taking her knife to the crystal. The blade sunk in easily, a harmonic scrape that bordered on the hiss of steam. She carved gently, slowly, until a pyramidic chunk could be pried loose. The light in the center of the crystal shifted, darkening in the slightest fashion as it did so. A new spark appeared in the center of her claimed shard, glowing in the palm of her hand. 

It took her breath away. She hadn’t ever seen something like this. She felt it, discovering that even the sides which hadn’t touched been exposed to the air were covered in a thin mucus. She turned it, observing it from each angle, and found no pattern to the light at its center. The pinprick of glowing light grew no larger no matter how close she brought it to her eye, infinitesimally small, perceivable only by the magnitude of its luminescence. 

She slipped it into a pouch on her belt and carved another piece, and then another, eventually having to toss them down to Souta. He took to the samples with the same fascination she did, going quiet for a long while. The larger crystal’s light continued to dance as she sampled piece after piece, always appearing in the center of the remaining structure. Much like a rainbow, she somehow knew she’d never be able to reach its origin.

When the crystal had been carved away enough, some ten or so fist-sized chunks collected into hers and Souta’s bags, she could see through it. Beyond the crystal was a tunnel, the same size and dimension as the crystal that capped it. It continued for some few dozen feet before opening into a vague clearing beyond, a brighter light creeping in.

Sumi secured her samples, holstering her sword in its belt loop. She pulled her knife from the wall and allowed herself to fall, dropping back down. 

She landed next to Souta and his now-glowing bag, which he’d tied to his waist. He had one crystal brought close to his telescope’s lens, trying to inspect it closer than he could with the naked eye. 

“I think there’s more of them behind this wall, Souta.” He glanced up from his work, tucking the crystal away. 

“What do you mean?”

“I could see past the crystal to a tunnel about the same size, one that went twenty feet or so back. The end of it was brighter than on our side.”

Souta went to retrieve his flare, bringing it back to the dead crystals. Sumi paused at that thought-- dead. She wondered why she’d called them that. It had seemed right.

He placed the flare up against the surface of the crystal, bending low to look close. Sumi bent over next to him, eyes straining against the light. The flare was almost used up, short and stubby, but they each carried four. They had plenty of replacements. 

There was indeed a tunnel behind the crystal, looking much the same as the one she’d already seen. It was smooth and symmetrical, a perfect cast of the crystal that blocked their access to it. 

“Think you can fit through there?” Sumi asked him. 

“I think so. It’ll be a tight squeeze, though.”

“Which you specifically said you wouldn’t do?” She guessed. He groaned. 

“That was before there was something interesting on the other side. Get your sword out, girl. We’ll see what’s through there.”

Sumi pulled out her Lacerta tooth sword, setting it at the crystal’s edge. She decided she’d try and take as much of this one in a single piece as possible, to give them a comparison for later. Hauling it out might be a pain, but it wasn’t like they had much better to do. 

It took several minutes of tedious wriggling of the sword to cut the crystal free, but she did it. The flare burned out in the meantime, and Souta had been close to lighting another one before she stopped him. Instead she set out the crystals in a small ring around themselves, lighting their immediate surroundings. They weren’t as bright as the flare, but they didn’t need them to be.

Eventually Sumi managed to pry the crystal free, exposing the tunnel behind it. A latticework of thin cracks ringed its length, giving it an ominous look, but it seemed sturdy enough. After all, it had survived long enough for this crystal to form without collapsing. Sumi took a deep breath and began crawling down the tunnel.

Souta followed her a moment later in much the same fashion, with the additional personal touch of a litany of whispered curses. She hurried up, trying to get to the end of the tunnel as fast as possible for his sake.

Sumi eventually freed herself into a chamber that was impossibly, incomprehensibly, vast. Glowing crystals littered the floor, walls, and ceilings, most larger than any she’d seen outside. The roof was a few hundred feet above her, the crystals there numerous enough to blend together in a kaleidoscopic haze, shifting from color to color like evening clouds on the horizon. 

Souta managed to get out of the tunnel behind her while she gaped. His panicky panting turned into a gasp as he took in what she had already seen. 

The floor, walls, and ceiling of the cavern were covered in a hexagonal checkerboard of pits, each similar in size and shape to the crystals she’d seen before. A quick glance down the nearest pit confirmed that a crystal lay at its bottom, glowing brightly. In places the pits grew close enough together to form depressions, and there clear water pooled. The glow of the crystals gave each pond a unique color, ethereal and dreamlike. 

Eyeless creatures lay across the cavern, still as the dead. Pale worms and wirey snakes curled on the stone near the pond, fish beneath the nearby surface floating past with skin thin enough to be translucent. None moved of their own accord, as if they didn’t dare disturb the perfect tranquility of the space. She had never seen anything like it, had nothing to compare it to.

But the truly disturbing thing wasn’t the small ponds, nor the bizarre life that littered their shores and depths. It wasn’t the craters, either, pockmarking the cave in all directions. 

It was the massive crystal at the center of the cavern, and the creature that lay wrapped around it.

Its lopsided form was indistinct, asymmetrical limbs scattered about itself in random arrangements. A pair of closed eyes sat upon a fleshy protrusion that she would have assumed to be its head, if its mouth hadn’t been placed on a similar growth far away. Its body rose and fell with slow breaths, each intake of air rattling for five seconds before wheezing out for another four. Its skin was dull and colorless, an odd contrast to the environment it was surrounded by.

“Sumi…” Souta whispered, as quiet as possible. “That is not a Monster.”

“What do you mean, it’s not a Monster?” She whispered back, unwilling to take her eyes off it. The thing was massive, at its greatest width a hundred feet long. She didn’t know where its front or back was, or if it even had one. It had thin grasping limbs running along every axis of its body. 

“That’s an Elder. Something that we can’t-- that no one can deal with. We’re leaving. We’re leaving as quietly as we can.”

“Wait. What’s the crystal at the center?” Sumi whispered.

“It doesn’t matter. That thing will kill us both. We need to leave. Now.”

Sumi felt his hand tugging at her arm. She reluctantly followed, taking gentle steps backward. She spotted more eyes on the creature, at the opposite end of the others. 

They were open. 

They were looking at her. 

Her breath froze in her throat, muscles clenched too tightly to let air enter her lungs. Thin limbs rustled around the eye, waving like kelp in the water. Souta noticed it too, freezing beside her. Its attention was overwhelming, oppressive. She locked eyes with the strange pupils, dots of black scattered in a white iris. Its eyes were the perverse opposite of the night sky, pools of black that marred a white canvas. She knew, instinctually, that this thing was beyond any capacity of hers to challenge. Maybe, hopefully, if they didn’t present a threat, maybe they could--

A pair of limbs shot down to the crystal, fast enough to send a crack echoing throughout the cavern. She didn’t have time to so much as twitch before they carved through the massive crystal, excising a torso-sized chunk and flinging it toward her. She’d managed to duck by half an inch before it slammed into the wall behind her, throwing violent shards through the air. A hailstorm of shrapnel assaulted her back, shoving her forward. She turned the motion into a spin and sprinted for the exit.

She caught a glance at the thrown crystal before diving after Souta to safety. It hadn’t shattered, instead embedding itself into the wall. The shrapnel had been from fragments of stone being knocked free, not the crystal exploding. That was all she could discern before she was back in the tunnel, following Souta’s feet. 

No anguished roar, no earthshattering blow, nor any thunderous assaults followed their retreat. The small tunnel was filled only with the sounds of their hyperventilated breathing. 

Souta scrambled into the open space on the far side of the cave, not even bothering to stand as he crawled as far away from the crystal wall as he could manage. Sumi was right behind him, barely thinking to grab one of the crystals they’d left behind for light. 

They sat with their backs against the wall, looking at the blank void that covered the entrance to the Elder’s cave. Sumi let her head fall back against the rock, pulling off her helmet so she could breathe easier. A cold sweat was breaking out across her body. Silence continued to reign, more unnerving than any roar could have been. 

“So.” She managed eventually. Souta swallowed next to her.

“So.”

“That’s an Elder, huh?”

“Almost certainly. Nothing… nothing else feels like that. You know what I’m talking about, right?” 

Sumi thought of the moment she’d realized it was looking at her. Thought about how every fiber in her body had locked up, how her heart had begun to pound hard enough to thud against her skin, and the sense of absolute inferiority that had subsumed her. She nodded.

“Yeah. That was an Elder.” 

“Let’s just catch our breaths here for a few minutes, alright?” Souta suggested. Sumi nodded, tucking her helmet into her lap. She wasn’t going to let it out of her reach in this cave, not for a moment. 

Their plan to relax failed in a matter of minutes. The sound of something reached them, distorted as it echoed down the long corridor above. Sumi couldn’t decipher it at first, only relieved that it was coming from behind them instead of from the Elder’s cave. She cocked her head, listening closely. 

A drop of something landed on her hair. She reached up and touched it, finding water. Another drop fell, splashing against the back of Sotua’s gauntlet. He looked at it for a moment, mildly interested, until realization struck them both. The sound was water, rushing down the tunnel. 

Sumi shot up alongside Souta, who immediately tucked his hands together for her to put a foot in. He threw her upwards as soon as she stepped into it, and she stabbed the wall to hold her in place. She leapt upward and pulled the knife free from the wall in the same motion, stabbing it higher to climb. She reached the top of the pit just as the water grew from a trickle to a stream, pouring over the edge. She set her feet and pulled a long rope from her belt, dropping it below. It was thin by necessity, but expensive enough to be well made. She felt a tug as Souta grabbed it. Seh began to haul upward with all her strength.

Souta appeared a few moments later, greeted by a faceful of water leaping from the lip of the cave. He sputtered as he pulled himself up, spitting the muddy water out of his mouth. 

“How long do we have?” Sumi asked, shouting to be heard over the rushing current.

“No idea!” He answered, moving on all fours towards the rightmost wall. The water was beginning to truly tug at them, trying to sweep them off their feet. “It depends on how much it’s raining above, I guess.”

“Will it fill the cave?” Sumi asked as she stumbled towards the wall, images of their choked corpses drifting in the darkness torturing her mind. 

“How would I know? I told you, I’m not a cave guy!”

“I think I’m not either, after today,” Sumi decided. She was dealing with the water better than Souta, the current slipping easily past her. Her moccasin-boots found easy purchase despite the slick rocks. She hastily used a free hand to tie the rope around her waist, tossing the other end to Souta. “Tie this on! I can catch you if you slip.”

“Or I could drag us both down,” Souta pointed out. She popped the rope, snapping it against his chest. 

“Just tie the damn knot, Souta. I’d kill myself if I let you drown, so it’s both of us or none of us.”

He winced at the brutally utilitarian logic, but did as instructed. Sumi focused on climbing against the current, a single crystal gripped in her left palm to provide light. A flare would be better, but she didn’t know how it would deal with the water. 

They’d known the climb back up was going to be long, but the rain turned it into torture. The current thickened until it reached her mid-thighs, its pull noticeable despite her armor’s properties. 

Growing up in the jungle had given her a very practical appreciation for the danger of sudden floods, and she knew from hard-won lessons that she should have been long since swept away. Water up to the ankle was enough to sweep a grown man off his feet, her father had always told her, and this was far past that. It was only by virtue of her armor and Hunter’s strength that they were making progress at all.

Souta was struggling terribly, though. She risked occasional glances back at him and saw him on all fours, getting every bit of traction he could. The rope that connected them was taut, and she suspected half his progress was from her dragging him. 

She felt the rope jerk at one point, accompanied by a startled shout. She knew Souta had fallen, but couldn’t look back. The tension against her waist increased enough that she could only focus on staying put. When she first felt herself slip backward a few inches, wobbling in place, she dropped the crystal and ripped her knife from her belt to stab into the ground. The impromptu handle stopped her backsliding, and gave Souta the time he needed to get back on his feet.

She ripped the blade from the stone, staring into the blackness. A slight glow emanated from the bags that were still tied to their waist, but that was it. She sheathed her dagger again and fumbled in her pouch, reaching for the flares at her waist.

Souta shouted something, probably asking why they’d stopped, but she couldn’t spare the attention to respond. She scraped the flare’s head against the wall repeatedly, trying to generate enough heat from the chilly surface to set the spark alight. After a number of pitiful attempts, red light burst into sight. 

She still didn’t know if the flare would go out in the water, and she wasn’t going to test it. Sumi tucked the flare into the narrow gap that let her see from her helmet, wedging it between the leather interior and her skull. She had to ignore the burning heat against her brow, struggling forward once more. 

Souta noticed her knife in her hand that was nearest the wall, stabbing into it to give her extra grip, and imitated it. They stuck close to the wall as they climbed, despite the fact that it was where the water was deepest. The center of the tunnel was a maelstrom of mixing white waves, too unpredictable to risk. At least the sides had a constant and comprehensible stream, and the wall for them to stab their knives into.

The march steadily faded into abstraction, a fog filling her mind. She stabbed, pulled, stepped, and repeated that for who knows how long. Souta grunted with effort behind her, giving up on moving his feet altogether. Lifting a foot was a death sentence, so he could only contribute by pulling himself along with his knife, Sumi dragging him the rest of the way. The flare burned against her forehead, flames whittling their way closer to her skin. 

Some time later, impossible to gauge how long, she noticed a break in the pattern up ahead. Something she hadn’t noticed when sliding down before. A second cave, jagged and irregular, broke off the side of the path. Water was pouring down that pathway, too, but not nearly as violently as it was the main corridor. Sumi put her head back down and worked her way towards it, a new goal refreshing her determination.

She eventually reached it, gripping the edges of the aberration with her free hand. She used that to haul herself forward and to the side, out of the worst of the current. Souta’s hand appeared a moment later, pulling himself closer. 

Sumi slipped the flare from its mount in her helmet, holding it into the air. The far side of the cave extended slightly beyond the entrance, mercifully higher than the corridor. A patch of dry land beckoned to her, calling her closer. She pointed it out to Souta, who nodded. They set forward, churning through the thinner current that poured into this cave.

Sumi fell face-first as she stepped out of the water, legs aching with exhaustion. She rolled over, letting the flare fall out of her hand to lay between her and Souta. The water continued to roar, filling the cavern, but she didn’t care. She’d only move if the hellish place filled entirely, threatening to choke her where she lay. 

That didn’t come to pass, thankfully. The water rushed past them for hours, filling the cavern with a bitter chill they couldn’t escape. Part of her wondered how the Elder at the bottom of the cave would deal with the sudden flood, but she knew it couldn’t have been the first time this had happened. Rain wouldn’t be the end of something like that. 

When the water had slowed to a trickle, just a small stream coursing down the center of the path, she and Souta began their journey again. The path was still steep, slick with water, but it was a far cry from forcing themselves against a river. They kept themselves tied at the waist just in case a second torrent began.

There was no bright light at the mouth of the cave to signal the exit, night having fallen hours before. It came as something of a surprise when Sumi began to feel wind coursing past her, looking up to see stars ahead. They broke out into the open sky a few minutes later, collapsing with relief into the muddy ground. They still had to get back to the ship, one last trip before they could finally relax, but it wouldn’t be far. 

They didn’t bother to avoid the underbrush this time. Sumi swung her sword back and forth, cutting through what she could. The thick, spiky vines could do nothing to their armor, and she waded through the forest without much thought beyond what was required to find her carved marks. 

The final ascent to the Stellar, pulling themselves up the rope, was agonizing. She opened the door to the ship and slithered inside, groaning. She didn’t even want to stand.

Souta crawled over her, throwing himself into the next free space. Hikoshi woke from her hammock at the noise and returned to the helm, finding them laying in a sodden heap. She asked if they wanted food, and Sumi replied with a limp thumbs-up. They’d made it home. 

Chapter Text

The story of their spiraling descent was relayed to Hikoshi between ragged bites of meat, swallowing chunks faster than their pilot could heat it on the small stove. Rain continued to whip against the hull occasionally, performing a staccato drumbeat on the leather envelope above. It was nothing compared to the torrent from before, but it set Sumi’s heart fluttering all the same. It would take some time yet to convince her subconscious that she had escaped that ethereal dungeon. 

A brief planning session was had, despite the late hour and mutual exhaustion. By Hikoshi’s estimate, before the clouds had covered the stars, they were a day’s travel from the edge of the first search zone. It was unlikely that they’d find the source of the disturbance right away, but not impossible. They would have to be ready. 

They allotted a week into their schedule to stay in this relatively safe grove, preparing for whatever might come ahead. 

“Did you find any iron in the cave?” Hikoshi asked. Sumi gave her a glare too exhausted to be intimidating. 

“Not that I noticed. Too busy running for my life, or nearly drowning, or investigating mysterious glowing rocks. Nail supplies kinda fell by the wayside, to be honest.”

“Well, is it safe to go back tomorrow?”

Sumi and Souta shared a look. 

“I suppose so…” He admitted reluctantly. “You have to work pretty hard to get into the Elder’s nest. As long as we stick to the upper areas I think we should be fine.”

“You really want to go back down there?” Sumi asked him incredulously. Souta rubbed his eyes, grumbling. 

“Not really, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. I can’t think of a good enough excuse to avoid it.”

“I got one: nearly died, never going back.”

“We’re going back, Sumi. At least once, to see if we can find what the ship needs.”

Sumi dropped her head to the table, not caring in the moment if she smudged Hikoshi’s map. 

“Alright, alright. You’re probably right. We’ll see if I can think of a better reason to avoid it in the morning.”

“Good luck,” Souta mumbled, leaning back in his chair. “I’m rooting for you.”

Hikoshi looked between them as she sat another plate on the table. Sumi barely had the energy to reach out and grab a bite. She did, of course, but it was close. 

“You two need to get some sleep. Get into your hammocks already.”

“But meeeaaat,” Souta whined, muffling himself halfway through the drawn out word by stuffing another chunk into his mouth. 

“Okay, you overgrown toddlers. I’ll bring you some meat in your hammock. Now get out of here already.”

Sumi slid out of her chair, trudging towards the cabin. She shucked off pieces of her armor while walking through the cargo room, not paying the slightest attention to where they landed. She heard Souta curse as he stumbled over something she’d dropped and chuckled. 

She climbed into her hammock wearing her chestplate, a single greave, and her underclothes. It took seconds for her to be dead to the world. 

Sumi’s mouth was thick with the taste of sleep when she woke the next morning. She craned her head towards the window, smacking her lips. Not morning, she decided. It was well into daytime. 

Souta was in the hammock beneath her, in a similar state of undress to herself. She was certain that listening closely enough would allow her to hear the agonized screams of the ropes responsible for supporting his armor. 

She rolled down to the deck, thumping loudly next to Souta’s head. He didn’t flinch.

She set about preparing for the day, chatting with Hikoshi in the helm. Her girlfriend was nose deep in one of Souta’s books, one of the few things she had to pass the time after she’d finished her charting. Hikoshi had a small notebook of her own now, likely stolen from Souta, and had been collecting a list of questions she had about the book’s contents. Sumi answered them as best she could while preparing herself a breakfast, enjoying the pleasantly domestic chatter it lent their small home.

She really did consider the Stellar a home, now. Its three rooms had hosted her for just over a month now, not long in the grand scheme of things. But more than once it had been a safe refuge that she’d gratefully returned to, or a beacon of hope floating in the distance, and it was the vessel facilitating her dream of becoming a Hunter. It had certainly earned the title of Home by deeds alone, if not by longevity. 

“Do you have a list of what you need?” Sumi asked Hikoshi.

“For the ship?” Sumi nodded, prompting Hikoshi to continue. “No, but I can make one. Are you just making replacements for what’s been broken, or are you willing to make a few extras?”

“If we have the time and materials, sure, I can make whatever you want.” She paused, mind catching up to her words. “Well, I can try, at least. No promises. I’ll be making a forge from scratch, and I’m hardly a master blacksmith even when I have my full suite of tools.”

“I doubt it’ll be anything too complicated. We’ve been doing a lot of things with this ship that it wasn’t meant to deal with, so I wanted to make some changes.”

“What do you have in mind?”

She hummed, tapping a charcoal stick against her notebook. “Some metal legs coming out the side of the hull, four of them. Something to keep the ship steady when it’s on the ground, so the hull doesn’t get uneven wear.”

“Simple enough, if we have the iron for it.”

“Maybe a sword for myself, too, in case something tries to screw with the ship while you two are out.”

Sumi gave her a doubtful look. “A sword? You really think that’s the best idea?” 

“Sure. It doesn’t get much simpler than ‘hit them with the pointy bit’, I figure.”

“How about a spear, instead? That one’s a lot less likely to end up with you cutting yourself.”

“Sword’s a lot cooler, though. I don’t think I can take a spear into town to brag with.”

“Maybe I’ll make you a sword later, if you want. It’ll be a lot easier to learn how to use a spear before you try and start looking like a pirate.”

“Alright, fine. But how come you get to use a sword and I don’t? You didn’t have much training at all.”

“I had way more training than you’d expect, actually. Two months isn’t long for most people, but you can train a lot rougher when it takes a few minutes to heal from a cut instead of a few weeks.”

“Souta cut you up?”

“I’d say it was about half him, half me.” Sumi rolled up her sleeves, revealing an array of very faint marks that circled her arms. “The potions didn’t work quite as fast on me back then, so the wounds had time to scar. Helped me get used to pain, too, which has been pretty useful.” She pointed to a particularly nasty scar, one that crossed her bicep in a jagged line. “That was from me drawing my sword out of its sheath wrong. I was in such a hurry that I got myself with the full length of the blade before I even realized.”

Hikoshi scrunched up her eyes in sympathy, inspecting the old wound. “How bad was it?”

“Cut through half the muscles of my right arm. If I hadn’t been a Hunter by then I probably would’ve lost use of the arm, maybe for good. Instead I was practicing again about thirty minutes later.”

“Huh.” Hikoshi wrinkled her nose and pulled away from the scar. “Alright, I guess I’ll go with a spear, then.”

“Perfect. I’ll make you a boar spear, like we made for the fishers of my village. Long enough to keep something away from you, but not long enough to be unwieldy. Add a cross brace to stop anything from running itself up the spear to gut you, and some leather around the haft for grip.”

“Sounds like this isn’t the first spear you’ve made.”

“Oh yeah, my dad and I made them all the time. Animals would snap ‘em like twigs half the time they had to be used, so people were always coming back for more. Got good enough at it that eventually I could make the shafts myself, didn’t even need the carpenter.”

“Half the time they had to be used they snapped? ” Hikoshi repeated. Sumi nodded absentmindedly. “What’s the point of that, then? I’ll get two stabs in before I end up defenseless.” 

“Still better than starting off defenseless. I’ll make you a practice sword, too, how about that? Once you’re not killing yourself with it like I did you can have your own sword.”

“That’d be nice. I’d like to have something that I can actually rely on.”

Souta’s bleary voice joined the conversation from behind. “If that’s your goal, you should be running laps and doing pull-ups. No better way to survive a fight than to not be in it.”

“Noted, coma patient. But jogging doesn’t get my girlfriend to make me a cool sword.”

“You can do both,” he argued. “But you’ll have to live long enough to actually get the sword. ‘Course you’ll also want to do some reading, because there are some animals you can’t outrun, some you can’t outclimb, and plenty you can’t outfight. Gotta know what’s best for each one.”

“It sounds like you both want me to just stay on the ship.”

Sumi gave her an apologetic look. “You’re not wrong. The wilds are a lot less forgiving than shady sailors and grimy back alleys.”

“I’m not going to stay in these same three rooms for months. I’d go crazy. But until you get me some gear I guess I’ll only head out when you two are here.”

“Probably for the best.”

Souta ate his own breakfast, chatting about their plans for the week. Sumi planned to spend no small portion of it sparring with Souta, not wanting a repeat of her time spent as the Lacerta’s plaything. She had to get used to her new equipment, and she needed to be ready for the next time they faced a serious threat. 

Souta was going to be perusing the forest for selections of wood, wanting to restock his arrows as best as possible. Some of the native fauna he’d seen were apparently similar enough to those described in his records that he felt sure he’d be able to use them to coat his arrows in varying poisons, so he was also going to build traps to collect specimens. 

Hikoshi, meanwhile, asked that Sumi’s first project be the spear she was going to make for her. She wanted as much time with it to practice as possible, which made sense. After that Sumi would begin to work on nails and other minutia that the Stellar needed, as well as arrowheads for Souta. 

All of this depended on their ability to find ore in the cave, unfortunately, which meant that the first item on the agenda was to head back down. Sumi and Souta finished their breakfast and slid down the ropes, heading for the cave that had nearly killed them.

They made absolutely certain that the skies were clear of any rain clouds before starting down the long slope. They didn’t slide down this time, shuffling carefully along with a torch held in one hand to light the cavern. They found an early offshoot of the cave almost immediately, the bright opening of the cave’s mouth still visible. It had been partially filled with water by the rainfall, an icy cold soaking into her legs as she sloshed through the dark sludge. 

This cave was a far cry from the perfectly smooth one that they’d entered from. It was natural, craggy and dotted with stalactites growing off the ceiling. Souta followed her, grumbling all the while, but most loudly when the walls began to draw close. They hadn’t encountered any branching paths yet, but Souta still dragged his knife along the wall to mark their way. 

It took a long while of careful searching, working their way through the twisting tunnel, but they did eventually find themselves a supply of iron. It was difficult to discern from the rest of the rock in the low torchlight, but Sumi was familiar with its shape and color. Souta had tossed the pickaxe as unessential at the beginning of the trip, so it was once more up to their knives and her sword to free as much iron as possible. 

On the way back, each of them waddling with a torso-sized chunk of iron ore wrapped in their arms, Sumi became grateful for Souta’s paranoia. There were several minor splits in the path, hidden by odd angles and rocky growths. If it wasn’t for the long scratch along the wall leading them to safety it was quite likely that they would’ve made a wrong choice somewhere along the line, lost forever after in the twisting depths. 

They eventually hauled six or seven of the massive chunks back to the surface, a volume that she had to admit was overkill. She did it anyway, simply because she never wanted to set foot in that cave again.

Souta split off to go search for wildlife and good wood for his arrows and Hikoshi’s spear, leaving Sumi to stumble through the brush back to the airship. The clearing they’d cut was already beginning to be reclaimed, so she had to spend a small amount of time trimming away the new growth. Several trips through the forest later she was surrounded by iron chunks and the leftovers of her armor making spree. 

Hikoshi came sliding down an anchor line to join her, offering her help. Sumi had her begin working on the pit that would serve as the forge, drawing it out in the dirt with sand. 

They ran into both a problem and its solution very quickly. The layer of dirt beneath the Stellar was only a foot or two thick, quickly hardening into the same stone that had made up the caves. Digging any further would be a frustrating headache, but it also meant that they’d have much sturdier material to work with. Sumi stabbed her knife into the ground and pulled it out, replacing it with her sword. The serrations of the Lacerta’s tooth chewed through the stone well enough, the experience closer to sawing wood than cutting stone. With Hikoshi’s help Sumi had a functional forge built in a few hours.

She dug a small tunnel to the side of the main chamber, connecting it to a smaller vertical pit about a foot away. The addition of the L shaped structure allowed her to feed wood into the fire, the heat being sucked through the tunnel to jet out in the larger chamber. It was a simple enough way to substitute a bellows, if one didn’t mind working next to a molten pillar of flame jetting into the air. 

The difficult part was going to be working the iron. She had no illusions about turning the ore into steel, which would have required far more preparation than she was willing to undertake on her first day. The simpler parts needed by the Stellar could be made of simple wrought iron, hammered and twisted into shape instead of poured into a mold. It wasn’t as strong as cast iron, and didn’t compare in the slightest to steel, but it would do.

Sumi spent the rest of the first day collecting the red-hot slag that her makeshift bloomery dispensed, shaping it with tools she’d salvaged from their kitchen. She’d heated ladles and spoons together to make a hammer, using a pair of expensive steel tongs just as they were. Hammering the nails often bent her impromptu equipment, but a bit of reheating, twisting, and quenching had it back in functional order. 

By the end of the day she’d made more than her fair share of spare parts for the Stellar, enough to replace what they’d lost and then some. Hikoshi still didn’t have a weapon to defend herself, but that was because Sumi was unwilling to arm her girlfriend with a wrought iron spear. She’d spent the last few hours preparing the equipment she’d need the next day, to begin properly casting steel.

The forge was deepened and widened, a stone slab cut to act as a cap so heat wouldn’t be lost as easily. Coal was once again looted from the Stellar’s engine supplies to act as a fuel, and it was that extra heat that let her bring the iron ore to its melting point. She’d made a pouring bucket and mold for the spearhead the day before, as well as several extra molds for Souta’s arrowheads. She was also struck by an idea when she spotted some of the Lacerta’s leftover teeth in the ship, similar in size to his arrowheads. She’d want to talk about it with him. 

The spearhead was finished by noon, the shaft a few hours later. Souta had found an excellent species for the weapon, stiff and free of knotted wood while remaining surprisingly light. Sumi wrapped the haft in thin strips of Lacerta leather, strengthening it further. The added weight threw off the balance, which she corrected with a small conical spike at the hilt. 

Hikoshi beamed like a child on their birthday when Sumi presented her with the finished product, showing her how to hold it. Sumi hadn’t used spears all that much herself, at least not in combat, but it was the very first thing every Hunter learned to use. All the equipment in the world couldn’t save you if you didn’t have it with you, Souta had explained, but you could almost always find a long stick to start stabbing with. 

After that Sumi alternated between making Souta’s arrowheads and giving pointers to Hikoshi, stepping over to correct her stance every now and then. The cast iron blade had no exceptional qualities like a Hunter’s weapon might, but it was well made and dangerous. Hikoshi stabbed the wooden block Sumi had brought her for practice again and again, steadily turning its surface to chewed pulp. Hikoshi rested between practice sessions by returning to Souta’s books, reading them out of boredom more than any practical desire. They certainly hadn’t been riveting to Sumi when she’d read them, after all. 

They spent most of the third day with all of them together in the camp. Souta was whittling shafts and attaching fletching to new arrows, tipping them with the collection of arrowheads Sumi had made. Hikoshi continued her sporadic practice, though she chatted as much as she worked. Souta helped give her tips as often as Sumi did, correcting her form or sharing advice about the common animal species that should give her concern while they were away. 

“You know,” Hikoshi said after some time spent practicing. “As much as I wanted to pilot a Guild scout ship some day, I never really thought of the fact that I might have to fight off a Monster myself.”

“Don’t get any ideas there,” Souta reminded her. “You’re not going to be fighting Monsters with that spear. You can take on a wild boar, if you’re lucky, and maybe something like a jagras if you’re desperate.”

“Two days ago it wouldn’t have mattered much if something attacking me was an Elder or a farm pig, I’d be dead either way. Feels better to think I have a chance, I think.”

“Want to test it out?” Sumi asked.

“What do you mean? You going to lure an animal here for me to stab?”

“That sounds pretty fun, but no. You can do what Souta and I did to practice spearwork.” Souta chuckled off to the side, but didn’t interject. Hikoshi narrowed her eyes at him.

“What does testing it out entail, then?”

“He wrapped some leather around his armor and charged me, and I had to use the spear to hold him off.”

“Oh, so when you say I can practice you actually mean ‘stab my girlfriend’?”

“You couldn’t get through my armor if you tried, unless you aim for my eyes. So long as you don’t do that I’ll be fine.”

Hikoshi thought about it for a moment, bouncing the spear between her palms. “Alright. I’m game.”

Sumi grinned. 

She didn’t have much in the way of soft leather like she and Souta had used, only Lacerta hide that would be too tough for the spear to pierce. She decided to wrap it around herself inside-out, the white flesh exposed for Hikoshi to stab. She thought it would be weak enough for the spearhead to get a decent bite into the flesh, realistic enough for practice. 

Hikoshi’s expression was predictably doubtful when she faced her girlfriend wrapped in dried meat, though. Souta counted down, putting down his work to supervise. Hikoshi dropped into her stance, feet spread with spear held low. 

“Three, two, one, go!”

Sumi rushed forward, careful to keep her speed under control. She was stronger than most animals Hikoshi would have to face, and snapping the spear or ducking past it wouldn’t help her learn much. 

Hikoshi’s spear met her firmly in the chest, angled well with a firm grip. Sumi continued to push, driving the spearpoint until it thumped against her armor proper, held in place by the wings of the boar spear. Her boots dug into the mud, driving her forward. Hikoshi hadn’t fought a boar or a jagras, had probably never even seen one up close before. Sumi wasn’t going to mislead her into thinking they were easy to deal with.

Hikoshi slid across the clearing, shoes dragging lines into the dirt. She grunted, trying to maintain control of the spear while still keeping her balance. Souta shouted instructions the entire time.

“Keep the spear low, lower! If you let her push against your upper body she’ll just knock you over. Knees bent, feet spread for balance.”

Hikoshi tried to do as instructed, but Sumi wasn’t making it easy. She didn’t move forward in a straight line, instead turning and pivoting like an animal would to try and reach their quarry. On a few occasions the spear nearly slipped free, but Hikoshi felt the loosening hold and shoved forward desperately each time. Sumi was impressed that she managed to recognize it instinctively; she’d accidentally freed Souta several times before she knew the signs to reset her puncture on the target.

Eventually Souta called the round to a stop, having them reset in the middle of the clearing once more. They both went over what Hikoshi could have done better, or what she had forgotten to do, and then began again. Sumi upped the ante each time they reset, pushing harder and harder. Eventually they had Hikoshi dancing around the clearing, paying as much attention behind herself as she did her front to avoid tripping over any debris. It was unlikely that she’d have to fight off any creature with enough power to throw her around like that, but they all agreed it was better to be overprepared than underprepared. 

Hikoshi was sweating profusely by the end, wearing a satisfied expression that matched Sumi’s own. With the constant taunts tossed back and forth and Souta’s belligerent shouting the practice felt less like training for combat and more like childhood games, wrestling for the best cut of leftovers. 

Leaning on her spear, Hikoshi asked them a question.

“What if there’s more than one? What should I do then?”

Sumi and Souta shared an uncomfortable wince. Sumi answered her question apologetically. 

“Best bet’s probably to run. You can only hold one of them off, and they won’t die quick after you stab them. You’ll probably get gored by the second before the first realizes it’s been hurt.”

“Huh.”

“Not an appealing thought, I know.” Souta admitted. “Once again, it’s important to remember that this spear is your very last, worst option. You don’t have armor, and you only have one weapon. It’s best to avoid a fight entirely, but if you get surprised? You need to be ready.”

“I’m starting to think you guys want me to just stay on the ship when you’re not here.”

“Pretty sure we’ve already told you that it’d be the smart thing to do, if you’ll recall. But I know I wouldn’t be willing to stay cooped up in the ship, and Sumi definitely wouldn’t stay inside. Seems unfair to ask you to do what we won’t.”

“Why don’t you make me some armor of my own, then?” Hikoshi suggested to Sumi. “You’ve got a decent amount of stuff left over. I don’t need something as fancy as you, just something to keep me a bit safer.”

“You think?” Sumi asked, pulling her helmet off. She tossed it underhand to Hikoshi. “Here, catch.”

The helmet sailed through the air, spinning slightly. Hikoshi reached out with both hands, an easy catch. The helmet hit her hands and immediately knocked them away, thudding into the dirt between her legs. Hikoshi jumped away, shaking her hands in pain.

“My god, Sumi, how are your neck bones not powder right now? I thought you said your armor was lighter than steel.”

“In some ways, yeah. It’s a lot harder than steel, probably ten times or so, which would mean you would expect it to be ten times heavier. Instead it’s only about five times as heavy, which makes it light.”

HIkoshi bent over, picking up the helmet. “This thing has to weigh fifteen or twenty pounds. Is all your armor like that?” 

“Just about. Souta’s is heavier.”

“How much weight are you two adding to my poor ship?” 

“My armor’s probably a hundred and twenty pounds or so. Souta?” She looked to him. He shrugged.

“Probably about a hundred and seventy, I’d guess. Almost as heavy as I am.”

“And you two wear that crap all the time?” 

“Hunter power, baby.” Sumi bragged. “This set feels lighter to me than my steel set did when I first got it.”

Hikoshi returned the helmet to Sumi, holding it in both hands. Sumi bounced it in her right hand, failing to keep the smugness off her face before sliding it back on. 

“We could get her some Handler gear, I suppose.” Souta offered. 

“What do you mean?” Hikoshi asked, interest piqued. 

“Handlers work with Hunters. They’re scouts or record keepers, sort of general assistants for any solo Hunter. I didn’t have one assigned to me, because my post was supposed to be my final bit of training, and they didn’t send one with us because of how quickly they wanted us to set off. They wear some protective gear of their own, but nothing as heavy duty as Hunters haul around.”

“That sounds more my speed. Would I have to be approved by the Guild to get a title like that, though?”

Souta waffled on that, juggling something imaginary between his hands. “Technically, I guess, if you want to turn it into a career. But field promotions aren’t unheard of, and it’s not like we could send a letter to ask them anyway. Calling you a Handler is more a legal loophole to get you kitted out in Monster gear of your own.”

“I think you both know that I’m all for screwing over the bureaucracy. What do I need to do?”

Souta thumbed at the collection of books Hikoshi had been sampling. “Keep reading those, then finish up by reading every other book I’ve brought with us. Handlers are supposed to keep records for Hunters and advise them in the field. Can’t do that if you don’t know left from right.”

Hikoshi’s face fell, looking to Sumi. “If I do that, though, you’ll make me my own armor?”

“If you’re a Guild member I could even use Monster parts for your weapon without getting us arrested. You wouldn’t be allowed to Hunt anything yourself, but it would make it a helluva lot easier to defend yourself.”

“Ugh.” Hikoshi looked from the pile of books to her spear, gears turning audibly. “I guess it’s worth it. I’ve done worse jobs for less.”

“Attagirl,” Sumi praised, leaving her to it. She walked over to Souta, stripping the practice leathers off herself. “Want to get some sparring in, too?”

He looked up from his arrows. “You sure? We haven’t sparred in months.”

“Exactly. We haven’t sparred in months, and I got my ass handed to me by the Lacerta. I have better armor now, but I need to know what to do with it.”

“You weren’t that bad. You got a lot of good hits in, even paralyzed one of its legs. And ripping my arrows out while it was still alive probably bled it out faster than anything I could have done.”

“I also almost, y’know, died. That kind of leaves an impression on a gal.”

“I think you’re exaggerating, but sure, we can spar.”

“Uh-oh.” Hikoshi looked up from the book she’d selected. “I heard about how you and Sumi spar. Am I going to have to watch my girlfriend get fileted in front of me?”

“That was before she had her armor. Training is a bit different once you’re farther along.” 

Sumi walked off to center herself in the clearing, strapping her shield to her arm. The Tigrex armor was holding up as excellently as she expected, but thin cracks were working their way through the shield’s wooden base. She really needed to keep her eye out for something to replace that.

Souta, meanwhile, went to select a log from the pile near the fire. He eventually hefted up a specimen longer than he was tall, a foot thick. It wasn’t too heavy for him to swing, but it was awkward to carry. Hikoshi skittered to the edge of the clearing after seeing this, then thought better of exposing her back to the forest and moved near the Stellar. 

Souta set the log over his shoulder, falling into a bent-knee crouch. Sumi brought her shield up beneath her chin, eyeing the tree trunk. There was only one way to practice fighting something as large as a Monster.

Souta spun, trunk whipping through the air. Sumi pivoted her body into the blow, catching it squarely against her shield. Before Souta could recall the weapon she lashed out with her sword, slamming it into the underside of the log.

The weapon barely dug in, bouncing off as Souta pulled away. She cursed to herself, reminding herself once again that her new weapon behaved differently to her old.

Souta turned the momentum of the retreat into another swing, wrapping it around himself to bring it down in an overhead blow. 

Sumi stepped to the side at the last second, angling her shield to send the log scraping to the side. It slammed into the dirt, giving her the opportunity to lash out with her sword once more.

This time she intentionally overshot her swing, hitting the farthest edge of the log with the hilt of her blade. She ripped the blade back immediately, feeling the serrations dig in to the wood with ravenous desire. What started as a small nick turned into a long gouge, six inches deep and a foot long. 

Souta managed to bring the log back around, keeping up the unending assault. They fell into a rhythm of dodges, attacks, and counterattacks, pace slowly building. Sumi took several hits to her left side, unable to bring her shield around in time. One blow knocked her to the ground, but it wasn’t something that would have been lethal from a Monster, and she recovered before she could get hit a second time. To her own credit, she was steadily tearing chunks away from the log, eviscerating it as the fight continued. 

On several occasions she managed to step forward past the improvised weapon, closing the distance between herself and Souta. She never attacked him directly, which would have been pointless, but each instance was a small victory for her. Souta’s body represented the Monster’s torso, and it was where the most effective strikes could be delivered. It was particularly satisfying towards the end, when she knew Souta was genuinely trying his hardest to hit her. 

They sparred for nearly an hour, several logs cut to pieces or snapped by the time they were done. Hikoshi didn’t get much reading done in the meantime, too captivated by the fight. 

It was instructive for Sumi, thankfully. She found out that she was over reliant on her shield’s ability to take hits for her, and didn’t deal with attacks to her sword arm as well as she should. 

The sword itself also required quite a bit of adjustment, traditional swings and thrusts no longer a viable strategy. What had been a single strike now necessitated two motions, something they decided to call the ‘contact’ and ‘draw’. She made initial contact with her target, which often did very little, and then she drew the sword across its surface. That set the blade’s serrations into action, ripping down into the movement. The faster she pulled the blade away, the faster they cut. She eventually realized that the cut required next to no additional pressure from her, the Lacerta’s tooth too eager to slide deeper into the attack. 

It was fascinating, in a way. She wished she had some kind of magnifying glass or other tool to inspect it closer, to see what structures caused the strange property, but Souta had tossed most of their research equipment to get them over the mountains. Even the individual points of serration were incredibly fine, difficult to discern with the naked eye. She still longed for a pointed tip to the blade, but the advantages in sharpness more than made up for the lack of piercing capability. 

Sweaty and tired, they ended their practice in favor of a meal. The rest of the day was spent in amicably quiet company, each of them working on their own projects. Hikoshi piped up with questions from her book every now and then, often specific enough that Souta’s answer taught Sumi something as well. Souta completed his new set of arrows, enough to fill his quiver several times over. 

The third day continued much the same, with Sumi casting more arrowheads for Souta. She spent much of her time experimenting with different mixtures of coal added to the iron, eventually finding-- to her own surprise, which she tried to hide from the others-- a fairly serviceable version of steel. Hikoshi’s cast iron spearhead was replaced before it had ever seen proper service, probably a good thing considering how much it had been dulled and bent by practice alone. Her girlfriend reverently pinned the first spearhead to the wall above her hammock, saving it for posterity. 

Sumi spent the rest of that day working on small chainmail links, taking advantage of her shockingly decent steel to cover some of the gaps in her armor. It was agonizingly tedious work on her own, something her father had always helped her with, but its mind-numbing nature left her free to chat with her friends. After a while she stopped using the methods she’d been taught, instead twisting the links together with brute force and Souta’s heat-proof gauntlets. That sped the process considerably, even if she was clumsy in the oversized handwear. 

On the fourth day, between sparring sessions with either Souta or Hikoshi, she managed to craft a small sheet of steel chainmail for Hikoshi. It draped around her shoulders, coiling up near her neck. When attached to a proper helmet it would climb to cover her exposed throat, but for now it called to mind a silvery scarf loosely draped over her aviator uniform. It was a small first step to a decent set of armor, but Hikoshi wore the gift like it was the finest of jewelries. Sumi felt compelled to remind her that she shouldn’t be too protective of it. Hikoshi looked like she’d rather her throat get cut than the armor.

Things were winding down on the fifth day of their break. Hikoshi took the crystals that they’d recovered from the Elder’s cavern up into the envelope, using them as a heatless source to safely light the pitch black space. Sumi used the day to reluctantly return to the cave a final time, hauling logs deep into the depths. 

Working by torchlight, with Souta’s help, she erected a barrier that blocked the path further down. It was a simple grid that would let water flow past, set into holes they carved in the stone, with a single large plate of wood in its center. On it she carved a pictographic depiction of a Dragon from straight lines, massive and intimidating. Several stick figure humans were crushed underneath its feet, while others were fleeing from thrown projectiles. She didn’t know if it would be enough to stop anyone else from venturing further, or even if anyone would ever find this place again, but she felt she had to do something. She returned to the surface that evening with a vague uneasiness in her gut, stirring alongside a sense of relief that she’d soon be leaving the place.

They had little left to prepare on the sixth day, so they used it to test the limits of the ship. The wind was particularly weak that morning, an excellent opportunity for them to see how well their engine repairs held up. Hikoshi circled the small forest with the throttle set low, Sumi in the back to monitor the engine. Souta stayed down at the camp, in case it became necessary for someone to recover their broken and charred corpses from the wreck.

They slowly increased the throttle as they spiraled above the forest, listening and watching for any changes in the engine. Weeks spent with the constant thumping of the thing pounding in her ears had permanently etched the specific rhythm in their memory, and they recognized it when the ship’s engine settled into the old familiar tune. Hikoshi scratched a line in the deck at that point, marking where the ship’s original designer had apparently intended the engine to be used most often. 

Naturally, though, they continued further. Hikoshi opened the throttle beyond the safety line at a snail’s pace, Sumi watching the engine while decked out in her full set of armor. A small rattle filled the air, setting her teeth on edge, but nothing visibly changed about the engine besides the pistons pumping faster. Hikoshi continued to inch the throttle forward, the ship accelerating as if the wind had caught its tail, and a sense of gentle elation began to fill Sumi when she thought of how much time it would save.

Until she noticed the wisps of steam curling out from under their makeshift patch. She immediately shouted to Hikoshi, who cut the throttle a moment later. The pistons didn’t respond promptly, taking some time to coast to a stop. Hikoshi walked back after Sumi confirmed it was safe.

“What happened?”

“Steam started to leak from the patch. I guess the adhesive got worn away, let some get through.”

“I guess that’s better than exploding. I’d rather have a slow leak than a ticking time bomb.”

“It might have still exploded. We’ve got no idea how much pressure that little patch is holding back.”

“Enough to lobsterfy you, at the very least. I think the cargo room still smells like boiled Sumi.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me. Let’s just mark where that point on the throttle was and never go past it.”

“Already did.”

“Perfect. I’ll reapply the glue once it cools down. I think I’ll grab some of the same stuff I used on my armor, hopefully that will hold up to the heat better.”

They guided the ship back down to the clearing, using the throttle at a much safer setting. Sumi had noticed that the propeller shaft, which they’d bent back into place, wobbled slightly at higher speeds, but she didn’t think it was severe enough to cause problems. But if she was wrong at least that problem would occur outside the ship, instead of in their bedroom. 

It was late afternoon when they got the ship secured again, and they decided not to set out yet. There likely wouldn’t be any good mooring points until they passed out of the pondlands, and they’d already seen one fairly severe storm in this area. Every day that they went without reporting back to the Guild was another potential attack on a village, another potential problem developing, but nothing would be solved if a storm smashed the ship to pieces and they spent months hiking back. 

The final night was a relaxed one, spent around the campfire cooking dinner. Souta had gone out and sniped a pair of larger birds, adding some variety to their Lacerta meat alongside the few fruits he’d confirmed to be edible. It was hardly an imaginative meal, but it was gratifying all the same. 

Souta slept on the ground once more, allowing Sumi and Hikoshi to retire earlier than normal to the Stellar. It wasn’t often that they had time away from the other Hunter on their journey, so they decided to use it well. 

When things continued to progress, heating past a point that Sumi felt comfortable with, Hikoshi recognized it. She stopped and reassured Sumi, and then Sumi reassured her in turn, spending some long hours talking and staying close. When tiredness finally overwhelmed them they curled up into Sumi’s single hammock, uncaring of the way the ropes strained under the weight. Drifting off to sleep, warm body pressed against her, Sumi decided her tolerance for the heat was building quickly. 

Chapter Text

The pondlands were no longer a constant downward slope as they continued their southern journey. Soon after leaving the grove they began to angle upwards, though subtly enough that Hikoshi never had to consciously raise their altitude to compensate. Unlike before, Sumi noticed no empty ponds on the journey, almost every crater filled to the brim with water. She attributed that to the storm from the following week, which implied that the ponds entirely relied upon rainfall to fill themselves. She noted it in her journal, which was rapidly approaching the final page. She’d have to ask for one of Souta’s spares soon enough. 

They passed one of the pondland’s natural predators around midmorning, a low-set bipedal Monster that was stalking a herd of the deer-things. It reminded her of an Anjanath, with obscenely powerful jaws and long legs built for bursts of speed, but it wasn’t the same species. The distinctive ‘wings’ didn’t show themselves along its back, and its snout was thin and long, and the legs that carried it were far longer than she felt was proportional. Its front arms, rather than bordering on vestigial, were long and sinewy, tipped with precise claws that could just scrape the ground beneath its head. 

The creature had submerged itself in a pond, sinking its dark fur to near invisibility in the water. Only its long snout poked above the ridge, sniffing the air. The herd continued its meandering path across the plains, none the wiser. 

Sumi didn’t see what set the beast into motion, but something clearly did. The herd was three hundred feet away from its hiding place when the Monster leapt, massive bulk throwing enough water into the air to create a personal cloud. Its long legs shot forward, reminiscent of a chicken’s sprint, if the chicken had been the size of a building. The herd immediately bolted, turning as one to flee from the Monster. They moved in rapid leaps, covering ground incredibly fast, but there were so many of them that the ponds became chokepoints. Crowds stalled between narrower points, some animals choosing to fling themselves into the ponds to continue fleeing, others hesitating in confusion. The Monster aimed itself for the densest of these crowds.

The reason for the creature’s freakishly long legs became apparent as a pond placed itself between the Monster and its prey. Its long legs unfolded in mid run, throwing itself into the air before stretching outward, catching the far side of the pond in a single motion. It cleared the fifty foot leap without a single misstep, eyes unerringly locked onto its prey. The herd’s panic reached a fever pitch, horns being thrown to encourage those in front to get out of the way, but it was too late. 

The Monster crushed the first few deer under its feet, plowing its mouth openly through the dense herd to impale helpless creatures on the tusks that revealed themselves alongside its tongue. When its momentum ran out in the middle of the herd it began to swing its barbed tail wildly, lashing out in every direction. The herd dispersed faster than Sumi had thought possible, but it wasn’t fast enough for some. More than a dozen crushed prey lay in bleeding heaps around the Monster.

They were past it now, the currents carrying them along, and Sumi followed Souta to the back of the ship to watch for as long as they could. Souta offered her the spyglass silently, which she accepted. The Monster wasn’t feeding on the prey, bizarrely. As it faded into the distance she watched it gently grab the corpses and bring them to a central pile, stacking them high. She didn’t know what it was going to do after that, because detail became too difficult to make out. 

She spent the next few hours recording the encounter in her notebook, growing frustrated with her inability to depict the creature anatomically. Her mother’s artstyle was certainly beautiful, and she supposed she was glad she had learned it, but the habits she’d formed kept pushing her back towards abstraction instead of clinical precision. She persisted anyway, trying not to let the jostles of the airship affect her work.

They passed out of the pondlands near the end of the day, the abruptness of the change nearly startling. Green grass gave way to pale yellow in a hard line, weaving away seemingly forever on either side. Hikoshi took the ship higher and higher, a chill creeping into the cockpit. She asked Sumi and Souta to tell her if they began feeling light headed, or “sillier” than usual, promising that they wouldn’t be so high for long. Sumi didn’t know what she was warning them of, but Souta agreed knowingly, so she did too. 

The land at this height was fuzzy and patchy, hills and forests reduced to blobs of color that stitched themselves across the landscape. Distant mountaintops began to peek over the horizon, exciting Hikoshi, who explained that they marked their destination. They weren’t a long range like the Southern Mountains had been, rather a cluster of malformed peaks that she couldn’t quite distinguish from so far away. 

Rivers once more dotted the landscape, in many cases seeming sourced from the mountains. At the edge of vision to their port a forest fire was raging, shooting a column of smoke high into the air. From what little she could determine it didn’t seem overly large, and likely wouldn’t spread somewhere they needed to worry about. 

Hikoshi tilted the nose of the Stellar forward, returning them to the altitude they more commonly sailed at. The forest fire and mountaintops dipped back below the horizon, obscured once more. 

“How long until we reach it?” Sumi asked. 

“You’ve been on this ship for a while now. Don’t you have a feel for it?”

“Uh, no. As far as I can tell our progress is pretty much based on luck and windspeed.”

“Good, I didn’t want you to think you actually know anything about sailing an airship.” Hikoshi hummed, thinking. “We should reach the mountains around this time tomorrow, if we’re lucky. I couldn’t see the base, so for all we know they’re so massive it’ll take another month to reach them. I doubt that, though, so we’ll see. I’m going to start looking for a place to set us down for the night.”

The Stellar’s dive matched her namesake’s, evening sun slipping through the sky. Hikoshi angled them towards a nearby forest, one that seemed strange to Sumi’s eye. Well, anything that wasn’t a jungle was still slightly mysterious to her, but this one was notable above the others. The green leaves came into focus sooner than she felt they should have, like they were stretching impossibly high into the sky.

Souta pressed his face to the glass beside her, suddenly excited. She couldn’t think of why, until she remembered a story he’d told her from his childhood.

These trees truly were massive. Red bark rose in dense rows to awe-inspiring heights, their branches and leaves cloistered together at the very top. Hikoshi spun the ship, changing paths to steer the ship towards the edge of the forest. Sumi had never seen the trees herself, only heard Souta’s description of the forest outside the city he’d grown up in, but they seemed identical. Souta’s reaction was enough to confirm it in her mind.

“I can’t believe how long it’s been. What are you guys doing all the way out here, little guys?”

Sumi and Hikoshi shared a unique look. Sumi leaned forward, watching the gargantuan trunks grow closer.

“Little guys?” She asked.

“Oh, yeah, this is a little baby forest. These guys are barely a hundred and fifty feet tall, I’d bet. This forest must be young compared to mine.”

“How big, exactly, were the trees you grew up near?”

“Oh, three hundred feet or so? They don’t die often, so it’s rare that someone gets a measurement. Whole city threw a big party the last time they managed to find a fresh trunk, the first in twenty something years. I was probably five years old then.”

“Didn’t… you say that there were animals large enough to eat the leaves off of those?”

“Yeah, there are. Don’t worry, though. They’re herbivores.”

“I don’t think their diet matters when they’re that big, Souta. They could kill us by accident.”

“One nearly got me that way, once.”

Hikoshi paused at the wheel, second thoughts about the landing zone flickering across her face. “Should we, you know, not land here for the night?”

He shook his head. “No, we’ll be fine. Fatalities from larinoth only really occur when they don’t see you. There’s too many poisonous or venomous creatures skulking about for them to step on everything that gets near, and we’re up by eye level. They won’t bother messing with anything that doesn’t spook them first.”

Hikoshi looked far from relieved by Souta’s reassurances, but continued to bring them in to dock at the edge of the forest. Sumi and Souta stood on opposite sides of the ship, Sumi having to work her way around the outside of the Stellar with bundles of rope coiled around her arms. Souta assured her that her new armor would likely protect her from any unlucky fall, but the gut wrenching vertigo that took hold of her every time she let her eyes wander downward seemed to disagree. 

Fortunately, this wasn’t the worst part. A perch for their ship that was so far out of reach from most Monsters didn’t come easily, and it would be ridiculous to let the opportunity pass because of her fear. She tightened the ropes around her arms, the ship slowly carried closer to the massive forest by a careful feathering of the engine’s throttle. 

The thickest branch, the one she’d selected, was about twenty feet away when she crouched low. The ropes had plenty of slack trailing out below, dangling between her and the leaf-sodden ground some hundred plus feet away. She settled into her stance, ignoring the thought. The lowest rung of the ancient tree drew as close as she would let it dare to the ship, the time for action almost passed. 

She bolted forward with enough force to feel the Stellar’s wooden ledge crack beneath her feet, sailing through the air. Her target was three feet wide at the base, twenty feet away. She tried to stay calm as she flew, but instinctual impulses won out and set her arms flailing wildly. She could only hope that the warbling screech that filled the air was from a nearby bird, not her throat.

She hit the side of the branch with her chest, cutting the scream short. Before she could slip down her hands clawed at the bark, pawing desperately to draw her forward. She hadn’t realized just how heavy the ropes were until her life depended on doing a pull-up with them attached. 

She eventually dragged herself to safety, doubled over and balancing precariously on the thick limb. Her work wasn’t done yet, though. She forced herself to her feet, eyeing the trunk that was as wide as a room. She hopped from branch to branch, uncoiling the rope to tighten around the tree. On the far side of the tree Souta was doing the same, and at his shout they would draw the ropes tight. The Stellar would be pinned in place, as safe a mooring as they’d found since leaving Narrowstrait. She just wished it hadn’t been so damn high. 

Despite her fears, though, she got the ship secured. The hour was less than late when she turned in to sleep, but the fact that their goal would finally be reached the next day left her predictably impatient. She forced herself to sleep, willing the next day to come sooner.

It was dark when the stampede began. A thudding, rumbling roar, shaking her bones like thunder and reaching her ears with a pitch that connotated fear. She fell out of her hammock, landing on all fours. Souta was awake beside her, buckling on his armor. Hikoshi, in the bunk across from them, had curled into a ball, fingernails drawing blood as they dug into the scalp above her ears. Sumi tried to stand and fell to a knee instead. 

The ship wasn’t moving. They were at rest. She tried to stand again and this time found her balance, though barely. She stumbled towards the rear window, reaching for her helmet as she passed it. Fitting it on her head helped enough that she could find it within herself to widen her eyes, staring into the night.

The bright moon sent shafts of light into the forest, highlighting in sporadic flashes the chaos that consumed it. Monster trode over animal over Monster, a torrent of bloodied flesh too obscene to be discerned or defined. She saw a Tigrex clawing over an avian serpent, the hoofbeats and lightning flashes of a Kirin illuminating for a moment dozens of jagras trying to shove their pack leader into motion, but it was already dead-- head caved in by the incidental swipe of a passing Anjanath. Almost every beast foamed at the mouth, the scent and sight of exhaustion palpable in the air. 

She felt the strength in her knees give, but she bolstered herself with a firm grip on the stove to hold herself to the window. She leaned forward, feeling the presence of Souta sliding beside her. Bile filled her throat as the wind whipped up from the forest, bringing with it the scent of rotting carnage. At the edge of sight, sat between two great oaks that stretched into the sky, was a Rajang. 

This one was different than the young she’d seen before. It was different from the adults she’d seen in the Guild’s records. Its coat was mottled with gray, black skin underneath weathered and wrinkled. Its horns grew out in long spirals, curling in on themselves in concentric loops before ending in chipped and dull tips. Its back was to them, legs folded beneath itself. The tip of its spiked mane looked like it would have reached past the envelope of the Stellar, more massive by far than should have been possible. As she watched, entranced, she saw that even the lightning that crackled across its spine was paler than it should have been, closer to the natural white of a storm’s flashing bolts than anything else.

The stampede was behind it, fleeing from it, but it didn’t pursue. It continued to sit, staring at something they couldn’t see. Sumi strained her eyes at that inky blackness, but nothing was given away. She heard Hikoshi clamoring behind her, shaking in her bunk, but there was nothing Sumi could do for her. The rearmost edge of the stampede passed beneath them, rumbling away into the distance, but the thing in the air didn’t dissipate. Sumi felt, beneath her armor, her hair standing on end. 

Souta took in a sharp breath, feeling something she didn’t. 

A searing white light split the sky, burning its image into her eyes. It came from above to pass through a massive redwood, splitting it in half, continuing on to blight the ground before the ancient ape. Nothing caught fire, the strike too hot to leave anything to burn. 

The window shattered into a thousand glittering pieces, shards of glass thrown inward by the apocalyptic shockwave that rolled past her into the plains. She caught only the vaguest impression of its pitch before her hearing vanished entirely, replaced by a squealing whine that consumed her mind. 

And she still couldn’t look away. Blood rolled across her eyelash from some unfelt cut above, but she couldn’t look away. Because the Rajang had a target. 

A target that was still alive.

From the smoke-ridden crater rose a thing. Its form was rolling and mountainous, black scales glittering in the remnants of the Rajang’s lightning. It walked on its massive wings as much as it did its four spiked legs, long spires of ebony bone protruding dozens of feet into the air. Sheets of stretched skin dangled from those spires to join between its shoulders, veins within pulsing with a sort of dark blood. Its eyes were red and furious, set above a snout so covered in blood that it fell in globs to the ground below. The only color on the creature belonged to its teeth, white and gleaming. 

Every nerve and wire that crossed her body was alight with fire, searing into her very skin the need to run. This wasn’t a thing that could be contested. It could be fled from, or avoided, but not fought, and it certainly could never be turned back. 

It was a Dragon. And it could not be denied.

She watched the Rajang stand, feet sliding backward, and knew it felt that too. Watched its legs quiver for a moment and was certain that it recognized what stood before it, a primeval master of the world that used to be. 

But the Rajang stayed. White lightning spiraled from the ground to its arms, twisting along its muscles in a serpent’s embrace. The nostrils of the Dragon flared, eyes narrowing to a glowing slit, and the Rajang stayed. The rumble that suffused the air intensified, something that she couldn’t hear any longer but felt in her body all the same, and the Rajang stayed standing. 

Somehow, her body shaking and shivering, she stood with it.

Her hearing returned in time to herald a snarl and bestial roar, overlapping and mixing in hideous rage. The two entities collided in a burst of lightning and smoke, tearing the ground beneath them into sodden shards. She watched as the Dragon, for a moment, met an equal, something she would have thought impossible. It was that sight which forced her to recognize what the ape truly was. 

A Great Rajang. The master of its kin.

Flaps of pink skin in the Dragon’s chest tore open as its foremost claws met the Great Rajang’s palms in a test of strength, spiked bones propelling themselves across the gap to tear into its opponent’s flesh. The Great Rajang roared once more as the pillars of black bone lanced its abdomen, sending the lightning that coiled along its back sparking forward through the sudden connection. The raw flesh of the Dragon exposed by the protruding spikes sizzled and cracked, blackening to the same tint as the scales around it. 

The Dragon recoiled from its opponent, spikes receding within itself once more. The smoke that billowed from its mouth continued to pool below, coating the battleground in a black fog. The Great Rajang launched forward, hand stretching for the neck of the Dragon. 

The Dragon’s maw nipped down to rip the offending limb to pieces before it could find its mark, but the Great Rajang didn’t stop. It let the Dragon tear into its flesh, sending lightning up the connection while its other arm gripped one of its gnarled horns, wrenching its neck from side to side. 

The Great Rajang’s massive hand tried to crush the throat of the Dragon, but nothing happened. The ape threw itself to the floor, trying to find better purchase with which to squeeze, but the Dragon lifted its neck higher, pulling its rival into the air. The lightning covering both grew to such intensity that Sumi had to squint against it, the twisted curves of the Dragon silhouetted in the night by arcing electricity, but the Dragon didn’t fall. Bright blood spurted from the arm of the Great Rajang, splattering into the dark mist below.

She watched as the Rajang’s fingers slipped, grip loosening. The Dragon seized the moment, slamming its opponent back into the earth with force enough to shatter stone. Waves of lightning leapt through the ground, forced from the Rajang’s body to leave its gray coat bare. 

And yet it took the moment to bellow in unintelligible fury, left hand curling into a fist that pummeled the creature’s neck in a blur of boulder-sized blows. 

The Dragon adjusted its grip, trying to tear the right arm free, but the attempt brought its sinuous neck next to the Rajang’s head. The ape thrashed wildly, slamming its spiked horns into the exposed neck again and again. Before the Dragon could pull away a strike managed to pierce, impaling the horn into the Dragon’s neck. The first roar of the battle that wasn’t born from rage sounded then, a screech so high it bordered on being inaudible. 

The Dragon threw the Great Rajang away, sending it skidding in the soil hundreds of feet backward. 

Towards the Stellar. 

When the Great Rajang rose, right arm dangling uselessly, Sumi’s mind returned to her. She fell away from the stove as if it burned her, scrambling for Hikoshi. Her girlfriend was still curled in her hammock, blood matting her hair where her fingernails had clawed long lines. She grabbed Hikoshi by the shoulders, shaking her.

“C’mon, we’ve got to go! It’s coming this way, we need to leave!” 

Souta sprinted past her, heading outside. She heard the snapping of docking lines as she tried to wake Hikoshi from her stupor, the ship beginning to be lifted by the breeze. Battle warred outside, drawing closer. Hikoshi’s lips were moving, her eyes open yet sightless, her hands clawing trenches across her scalp. 

Sumi hauled her up, forcing her to look at the window that had been broken, the glass that scattered itself across the deck. 

“They’re going to destroy this ship if we don’t leave! We’ll all die! You, Souta, me, the Stellar, gone!”

Hikoshi’s eyes flickered the barest bit, focusing on the empty window frame. Nothing could be seen of the battle outside anymore, but the roars placed it below the ship itself. Sumi held Hikoshi up, waiting desperately for any response. 

The weight in her arms lessened when Hikoshi blinked, the taller woman taking some of her own weight. Petrified eyes looked to Sumi for some kind of guidance, maybe some kind of reassurance, but there wasn’t any to give-- only a desperate plea.

“Get us out of here, Hikoshi. Please!”

Hikoshi fell backward out of Sumi’s arms, stretching a hand out to spin herself towards the helm. She broke into a sprint, dashing for the ship’s wheel. Souta returned from outside, the last docking line severed, and let out a whoop when he saw Hikoshi up and moving. 

Sumi let her go, diving to the floor to rip the trap door from its slot. The engine beneath sat cold and unmoving. Her hands danced across the machine, bringing it to life faster than she ever had before. She felt the Stellar’s control surfaces begin to flicker above her, spinning the ship, and saw the throttle controls that joined into the engine begin to move in answer to Hikoshi’s demands. A spark lit in the firebox, spreading across the black coal. Water heated above, turning to steam, setting the pistons groaning to agonized life. As if in answer to that fiery brew, a more primal roar sounded from below.

Sumi lept away from the engine, returning to the helm. Hikoshi stood with a white-knuckled grip on the wheel, making so many adjustments that Sumi wasn’t sure their pilot wasn’t doing more than shaking in fear. She couldn’t blame her, if it was the case, not without being a hypocrite. Sumi was shivering harder than she had on the frozen mountaintop. 

They rose into the sky, the sounds of the fight growing fainter. She stumbled up to Souta, slapping a hand on his shoulder. He jumped, trying to bolt, but she held tight and forced him to look at her.

“Do you know what that is? Does anyone?”

“Everyone knows what that is,” Souta said, voice quiet. 

“It’s a Dragon.” Whispered Hikoshi from the wheel. They turned to her. “It’s a Dragon. And it’s here, beneath us. Not in the stories, not in some far-off adventurer’s journal. A true Dragon.”

Souta sighed, pulling his bow from his back as if it would do anything. 

“I hate to tell you kids this, but we are the far-off adventurers now. This is our fight, our problem to solve.”

Sumi flung her arm out to the window, where lightning strikes were beginning to rain in rapid succession. The thunder accented her words. 

“Like hell is this our fight! What do you want us to do, bury it in our corpses? There’s only three of us!”

Souta laughed, a wild stuttering thing that teetered on the edge of reason. 

“And there’s only one of it! Three of us, one of it! We’ve got it outnumbered!” His eyes sharpened suddenly, catching the light as he seized Sumi by the shoulders and brought himself close. “You saw that beast. That Rajang. You saw it fighting the Dragon. I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say we can go back to the Guild, that we can bring reinforcements, that they can find a team that might kill this thing. But you know what happens if we do that?”

“We live?” Sumi answered, baffled by Souta’s resistance to retreat.

“And the Rajang dies.” Sumi stopped, meeting his eyes. “That Rajang, every animal and Monster we saw fleeing, they die. That Dragon will kill them.”

Sumi let her head fall back, eyes locked on the wooden grain of the ceiling. Souta was right, after all. The Rajang wasn’t going to win that battle, she could see that. Nothing else that they’d seen on their journey could even come close to killing that thing, and returning to the Guild would take weeks, martialing reinforcements even longer, and when she factored in the time it would take to return to this place it would be even longer. The pile of corpses that Dragon would build in their absence would rival the mountains, if it was even in the same place for them to find.

“How long do we have?” Sumi asked, weary resignation suffusing the words. 

“I don’t know. Territorial disputes between Monsters can last weeks or months, but we have no idea if this was their first encounter. Neither seemed injured, so it’s likely, but we just don’t know.”

Hikoshi was looking out the window at the lightning storm that was raging in the black fog behind the ship. “How could that fight end without one of them dead?”

Souta turned to watch, too. “It doesn’t seem like it could, but a Monster is still a Monster. They’re not dumb. When one starts to get the upper hand, really get a chance at winning, the other will run. A territorial dispute between two Monsters in a populated area is a Hunter’s worst nightmare. They can heal any wound in days, and if the winner of one fight doesn’t find its opponent before it’s done healing everything’s back to the start. Technically, a killing blow could happen at any time, but it’s far from likely. Monsters as powerful as those two could war for months, for all we know.”

Hikoshi’s face paled. Sumi knew she was imagining the conflict unfolding behind them playing out near a colony, or even worse, a city. Sumi had never seen it herself, but she’d read accounts from Hunters that had been dispatched to deal with it on the frontier. It was why every Hunter’s first and foremost mission was to maintain balance between Monsters. A conflict could only end with innocents crushed. 

It was also another reason for them to deal with the Dragon here and now. Every Monster it killed was a crack in the foundation, a deadly fissure threatening the balance of entire regions. A single Monster, surrounded by equal opponents, would likely content itself with the territory it had already claimed. But any vacancy was eagerly seized upon, and it was never just one creature trying to stake its claim. A Monster’s premature death was tragic for many reasons, but most of all because of what would follow. 

Small spaces opened and were filled frequently, the natural course of aging predators and eager younglings, but those were simple to deal with in comparison to what was building here. A Hunter on the frontier could back one Monster or another, tilting the scales in favor of the species that would best fit the balance of the area. But they’d watched as dozens, if not hundreds, of Monsters had fled this conflict, and the conflicts they would spark as they fled north could only be described as a war. 

“The villages that were wiped out before were nothing, weren’t they?” 

Souta nodded. “They had to be the very edge of the wave. I’d bet it’s gotten way worse since we left.” 

Hikoshi cursed under her breath as she piloted. She was flying them high in the night, unwilling to risk a collision with an unseen obstacle despite the fullness of the moon above. 

“You know what we have to do, then, right?” Hikoshi asked them. Sumi and Souta broke away from watching the lightning storm, turning to their pilot with confused expressions. “Really? It hasn’t occurred to you yet? You have to let me go on my own.”

“What?” Sumi burst out. 

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. I set you two down somewhere close by, let you prepare. I have to head back to the Guild to warn them while you two try and do something.”

Souta took a step towards her. “Why? You’re as much a part of this expedition as either of us, and the Guild sent you as our pilot. We can’t just send you off on your own like that, you’ll get eaten alive.”

“I’ll agree with you two on one condition: look me in the eye and tell me that you’re certain you can kill this Dragon.”

Sumi and Souta looked at each other with gaunt expressions. Hikoshi didn’t bother to wait for a response. 

“You have to make a stand here, and I get that. But there’s not a thing I could do to help, and that means I need to head to the Guild.”

“We could train you,” Sumi tried. “It doesn’t take long to become a Hunter. We could teach you how to use a bow, so you’ll be farther from the fight, or--”

“Sumi. It took you months to become a Hunter, and you actually wanted to do it. We don’t have months here.”

Souta’s sigh sounded almost like a growl, but his shoulders slumped. “You’re right.”

“Souta!” Sumi whipped around to him. “She couldn’t even make it back on her own. The Stellar would get torn apart by the first Monster that took a passing interest in it, and the entire trip would be pointless! She needs to land, resupply, dock, things a single person can’t do.” 

“Not if I never land.” Hikoshi stated in a dull monotone. “All I need to do is head North. Where I end up crossing the mountains doesn’t matter, as long as I don’t end up hundreds of miles off course, so keeping the ship in the air while I sleep won’t matter. Every village has a Hunter, and I can land at the first one I see.”

Sumi’s jaw worked, trying to find a way around the argument. “You still won’t have a way to fight off a Monster. If anything that flies attacks the Stellar, that’s it. You’re dead for no reason, and we don’t have a way to get back if we can’t kill the Dragon.”

“You can build me a ballista. I won’t be able to kill anything, but I can drive something off if I need to.”

“Fuel, then. You don’t have enough to make it back, and you don’t know the winds. How will you get over the mountains?”

“I’ll leave in a few days. You can get me more, even if it’s just charcoal. If I run low I’ll save the last bit until I get to the mountains.”

“And if you die anyway? We’ll be stranded, with no way to let the Guild know what’s happening or what they need to prepare for.”

“If Souta’s right, it’s already gotten bad back at home. I doubt they’re going to sit around twiddling their thumbs, waiting on our report. More ships will be sent. As for stranding you?” She glanced between them. “You two wouldn’t leave until you’ve killed it or it’s killed you. Me staying wouldn’t change that.”

“I’m not trying to be a martyr, Hikoshi. This isn’t a suicide mission. I made a promise to my family.”

“Alright, fine, you won’t do something to get yourself killed. But do you really think you’d leave the Dragon behind, alive and killing? Or would you get your ass kicked, heal up, and wait to give it another go?”

Sumi bit her lip, her silence enough of an answer. Hikoshi turned back to the wheel.

“Four days. We’ll find a good spot for you two to set up camp, gather some supplies for my trip, and then I’m gone.”

Souta’s grip on the table was cracking the wood, Hikoshi’s map tearing under his fingers. After a long silence, his arm fell limp. He pulled his helmet off and gave Sumi a lopsided grin, an odd looking thing when placed under his worried eyes. 

“I sure know how to pick ‘em, don’t I? You really owe me for landing her for you.”

Hikoshi rolled her eyes at him. “You didn’t land shit, big guy. She saved me from bleeding to death and looked so hot while she did it that I busted a stitch in my leg trying to talk to her again, and nearly bled out for a second time in the process. She’s my catch.”

Souta laughed while Sumi blushed, putting his hands on his hips and meeting Hikoshi’s eyes through the window’s reflection. “You may have started it, but you can’t tell me that awkward little conversation was going anywhere fast.”

“Oh, congratulations, you peer pressured me into asking her out. I would have done that as soon as she let it slip that she liked girls.”

“ She didn’t know she liked girls!”

Hikoshi responded with a dismissive shrug. “Wouldn’t have taken her long to figure it out around me.”

Souta’s laugh was belly-deep, his expression finally easing. “Lotta confidence you got in yourself, girl! The trip to Narrowstrait wasn’t that long.”

“It wouldn’t have taken that long, trust me.”

Sumi’s blush was neck deep by now, but the jabs between Souta and Hikoshi didn’t stop. It was a relief, an easing of the burning tension that had suffused the ship since the rampage began, but my word she wished her relationship with Hikoshi hadn’t been the catalyst for that. She dropped into her chair and opened her notebook while they exchanged verbal barbs, pretending that she wasn’t listening at all. She suspected that every aspect of her demeanor betrayed that fact, anyway.

Hikoshi spent the remainder of the night steering circles around the sight of the far-off battle, bursts of lightning betraying the course of the fight as the hours passed. 

Shortly before the sun rose there was a single maelstrom of simultaneous strikes, so many bolts slamming to earth that it seemed they were a solid mass-- and then nothing. 

It seemed that the battle had concluded, at least for this day. She could only pray that it hadn’t ended in the Rajang’s death. 

The sun rose of a scarred and burned landscape, the path of the battle evident in the ashen trails that crossed the world beneath. Craters of lightning strikes were surrounded by the ash of burned grass, some fires still lingering around the impact sites. Much of the grass that had been swallowed by the Dragon’s black fog had withered and died, already a sickly brown. The fires sparked by the Rajang consumed the dead plants eagerly, columns of soot rising into the sky. The crew of the Stellar could easily follow the winding path the Monster’s duel had taken across the night, covering miles and miles of terrain. 

Hikoshi continued to search for a place for them to land, discussing each option she spotted with Souta. They decided on a relatively narrow slice of lowland that crossed between two large lakes, placed such that they would block the path of anything heading north on foot. Souta expected that many of the Monsters fleeing the Dragon would be funneled through there, giving them plenty of opportunities to cull the numbers that the Guild would have to be dealing with, if only slightly. It was defensible enough, though, and a smattering of trees would serve as supplies to build their camp.

Hikoshi landed near the eastern shore, not even bothering to complain about the problems induced by setting the ship’s full weight against the earth. Souta and Sumi set about preparing the initial camp, erecting a simple circle of stakes around the Stellar, while Hikoshi stayed in the center and practiced with her spear. 

Unlike before, when her interest in the weapon had been nearly academic, her eyes burned with focus. Sumi knew she wouldn’t go down without a fight, at the very least. 

Chapter Text

Sumi had counted. There were two hundred and fourteen trees within a reasonable distance of their lakeshore camp, discounting the tangled mangroves that occasionally came close to the shore. They averaged fifteen feet tall, three feet thick, giving her a fairly decent amount of cordage to construct the stockades that would stem the tide of Monsters flowing past. They’d already seen several carefully skirting the edge of their camp, heading North. None stopped to eat or drink, too focused on their flight from the Dragon and Rajang’s territorial dispute.

Stakes formed the bulk of her planned encampment’s defenses, but even the thickest of them wouldn’t hold off a medium-sized Monster. That was fine, she reasoned. She wouldn’t have enough logs to encircle the entire thing anyway, so she left strategic gaps for smaller species like Great Jagras to pass through. If they made the journey all the way to the mountains the Guild would easily dispatch them. It was the others she worried about.

Souta dealt with the first Monster on his own, leaving Sumi to work on the defenses. It was the first time she’d seen him Hunt on his own. The change in his tactics was stark, to say the least.

The first Monster worth stopping came by within a few scant hours of their arrival. It was a variant of an Anjanath, feathered coat green and shaggy, like moss. It was smaller than most, likely just into adulthood, but it still towered some twenty feet into the air. Souta approached it in the open, bow held loosely in front of himself. 

The Anjanath roared its challenge, answered by two thick arrows that impaled themselves in its throat. It lowered its head into a charge, closing the fifty foot gap between Souta and itself at a blinding pace, only earning several more arrows scattered about its pelt. 

Just before the Anjanath reached him Souta dropped his right knee, as if to roll to that side. The Anjanath lowered its head that way, anticipating the move, so Souta turned the bent stance into a leap, one of his thicker arrowheads finding its mark in the neck of the Monster as he did so. 

The Anjanath whirled, slamming its barbed tail into Souta as he was halfway through drawing his next arrow. He didn’t bother to evade, taking the hit directly to the chest. The power of it sent him skidding backwards a dozen feet, yet he stayed upright, completing the draw to loose another arrow. It took the Anjanath in the right eye, blinding it.

The Anjanath’s rage boiled over, a guttural screech filling the air. It leapt forward, great vertical wings extending upon its back in a threat display while bubbles of fire began to spill from its lips. Sumi recognized it as a mistake when she saw the great veins running through the massive wings.

Souta switched to lighter arrows, their metal heads no thicker than the shaft, and peppered the new pulsating target by the dozens. The Anjanath tried to charge him again, but it was useless, its movements uncoordinated and reasoning clouded by blood loss. Thick ichor was pouring profusely across its body, coating its flank and the grassy lakeside. She couldn’t see Souta’s expression beneath his helmet, but his movements were clinical, impassionate. 

She watched as the Anjanath continued to stumble, fire bursting forth in attempts to cook this minuscule attacker, but the flames rolled off his armor as easily as water. He only shielded his bow when they came, taking care that the string wasn’t warped by the heat. 

The battle was over in minutes. The Anjanath slumped to the ground. Its chest heaved, eyes, wild. Souta approached it with the thickest of his arrows nocked to his bow. He placed a boot upon the creature’s cheek, to still it, and then buried the arrow into its remaining eye. Even the fletchings of the multi-foot projectile disappeared into the flesh, snuffing the spark below. The Anjanath was dead.

Souta returned to Sumi’s cheering, waving at him from where she was impaling a pole into the ground. He answered her enthusiasm with a half-hearted wave, pulling up beside her to sit against the wood. 

“Damn, Souta. Didn’t know how much I was holding you back on our Hunts.”

“Y’weren’t.” He grunted, pulling off his helmet. He unbuckled a portion of his armor, dropping the shoulderpiece so she could see a yellowing bruise crawling up his side. “I was too frustrated to play it smart, that’s all.”

Sumi winced as he continued to pull off his armor, something she’d never seen him do in the field. Her sympathy didn’t outweigh her desire to insult, though. “You should try not getting hit as much. That’s what works for me.”

His glare was withering. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Each removed armor piece exposed new reaches of the wound, shade darkening to purple before her eyes. He gestured to it, the movement making him hiss. “Meanwhile, you keep this in mind. This is what happens when you get too impatient. A Hunter can’t rush a job, no matter what. This is what happens.”

Sumi got what he was saying, but she still hesitated. “I mean, you could have died. That would have been worse.” His glare deepened. She raised her hands. “I’m just saying, alright? It looks like it sucks pretty bad, but you killed an Anjanath in like fifteen minutes, and all you’ll have to do is drink a potion to walk it off.”

“That’s not the point.”

“I know, I know, and I agree with what you’re trying to tell me. I’m just saying you could have picked a better example to use.”

“You’re infuriating.”

“That’s ‘cause I’m right.”

“Ugh.”

She offered him her potion bottle. He waved it away. “I can heal this up on my own. I counted our stocks before we landed. We’ve got enough raw supplies for about twenty bottles. That sounds like a lot now, but we don’t know how long we’ll be on our own. There’s probably local substitutes for most of the ingredients, but we’ll have to experiment before we can get a working recipe down. I doubt it’ll be as effective as our home brew, if we can even make one, so it’s important to save the good stuff.”

She nodded, clipping the potion back on her belt. The bruising was extensive, but had been distributed enough that he likely hadn’t broken a rib. He’d probably be in fighting shape in the morning, healed by the next day. If something came up that required his help he could always take a quick sip and be in the battle in minutes.

Sumi spent the bulk of the day assembling the camp’s defenses, the rest of it working with Hikoshi. The two of them crawled over and through every nook and cranny of the Stellar, making sure there were no hidden problems that would rear their heads when Hikoshi was on her own. They found and sealed even the smallest cracks in the wood, even in the outer Hull. Sumi had to crawl underneath the deck to find those, which brought to mind unpleasant memories of time spent in the Elder’s cave, but every time she was about to give up and return above she found another crack to seal. 

She went up into the envelope with Hikoshi for the first time to make sure the crystals that lit it were well-secured, marveling at the complex stitching of various hides that contained the hydrogen. Stiff ropes were the only form of bridge or ladder, making her grateful for her Hunter’s strength, baffled as she was by Hikoshi’s calm dexterity displayed while navigating the room. Wooden beams had been suffused with hot steam and bent into artful shapes that maximized the usable area, giving the space a disorientingly nonconformal feel. The outer layer of the envelope, visible to the outside world, was thinner than she’d expected. Its main purpose was to streamline the structure, not to provide lift, she learned. Hikoshi explained it was a leather made from the same species of Monster that provided the hydrogen for the gas bags, chosen because of its skin’s light weight.

They secured more crystals in the darker crevices before returning below to work on their final challenge. The damnable engine, savior and curse in one package. They’d treated it more than roughly over the course of the trip, but it hadn’t failed them yet. Well, it had once, but that had been her fault, so she’d forgiven it. 

Sumi re-applied another layer of glue to the seams of the patch, using the last of the adhesive she’d prepared for her armor. Every exposed joint was checked and double checked, searched for cracks or signs of stress. She didn’t honestly know why they were bothering, because it wasn’t as if either of them would know enough to fix a problem they found. They looked anyway, finding nothing. She wished she could be reassured by that.

Night fell shortly thereafter, their small trio reconvening around a campfire. The skies were clear, alight with dazzling stars. A thick band of them glittered above, curving from horizon to horizon with the waning moon a jewel set in its center. Sumi warmed the oldest of their supplies over the fire, wanting to ensure nothing Hikoshi needed would spoil on her return journey. 

Lightning sparkled at the southern horizon from a cloudless sky. It seemed neither the Dragon or Rajang had been killed the night before. She wasn’t sure if that was a relief or not. The last few days had been chock full of uncertainties, it seemed.

“So, Hikoshi.” Souta began. She looked up from the book she’d been reading, back turned to the fire to give her light. “What’s the largest dimension an animal can get before being considered a Monster?”

“I thought there wasn’t one? They’re designated a Monster when a consensus of five or more Hunters that have Hunted one agrees, right?”

“Correct. What’s the minimum gauge of rope required to ensnare a Rathian or Rathalos for a length of five minutes or greater?”

“Are you giving me a test right now?”

“Yes. What’s the answer?”

“I don’t know that one.”

“Alright. What are the four separate criteria that can allow an un-quested Hunt to not be considered poaching?”

“Uh--” She closed her book, leaning forward. “Being in the Guild is a pre-requisite for all of them, I think, and then someone has to be in danger, or the Monster has signs of a spreadable disease, or…” She squinted, thinking. “Being more than fifty miles from a settlement?”

“Wording’s off, but good enough, we don’t need direct quotes. How far should a bait trail be spread to lure a Class 2 or larger olfactory tracking type predator without inciting or risking interspecies conflict?”

“Class 2 is the second biggest, olfactory means smell…” She audibly worked her way through the jargon before answering. “Two miles?”

“Radius or diameter?”

Her face scrunched up. “Diiiiiaaammmeter?” She offered, clearly guessing.

“Correct.” Souta accepted it anyway. He leaned forward. “List the taxonomic ranks from most to least inclusive.”

Hikoshi’s eyes bulged. “Um. Kingdom. Fy-- flyum? Class. Family. Species.”

“Partially correct. It’s phylum, by the way. Three and a half’s good enough for me, though. That’s a majority correct, which means I bestow upon thee..” He whirled his hands theatrically, ripping a sheet from the notebook in his lap and pushing it against her shoulder. It fluttered away immediately, landing on Hikoshi’s book.

It was a hastily-scrawled note that read “ Offical Guild Handler”, typo included. Around it was drawn a star similar to the badges city guard members wore, but with far too many points. There was also a smudge where Souta had very obviously erased an errant line, then drawn over again with the exact same mistake slightly to the right. 

Hikoshi held it pinched between two fingers, holding it to the firelight.

“Thanks?”

“Don’t knock it.” Souta leaned back, arms folded behind his head as he watched the stars. “That little piece of paper means you’re a field-designated Guild member, and it entitles you to Hunt and make use of Monster equipment as you determine is necessary in the absence of a Hunter or higher-ranking Handler.”

“They’re gonna think a toddler made this, Souta.”

“It’s got my signature on the back.”

Hikoshi flipped it over, revealing a beautiful piece of calligraphy that formed Souta’s name across half the page. It seemed he’d stolen Sumi’s inks to make it, because it was glossed on so neatly that it shone against the fire light, curved loops emphasizing its more elegant flourishes. A small paragraph beneath, written so ornately it was difficult to comprehend, detailed the permissions and authorities granted to Hikoshi by holding the paper alongside a clinical description of her appearance that would prevent imposters from using it. It would have taken hours to dry that thick and layered signature. Sumi had no idea when he’d done it.

“Oh, I see.” Hikoshi flipped open a vest pocket and dropped it inside. “You’re being an asshole again.”

“I am an ar teest, ” Souta responded, flavoring the word with a thick northern accent. “Everything I do is intentional. Give it ten years and I’d expect that scrap of paper to sell for a pretty pile of coin.”

“Selling that would never be worth what it will cost my dignity.”

“Oh, I understand,” Souta lamented, placing a hand over his heart. “It is difficult indeed to let such a treasured keepsake slip through your hands, no matter the price offered.”

“I’m going to kick you in the balls.”

“I have armor on.”

“You better keep it on, then.”

They stared each other down for a tense moment before the group broke into laughter, everyone returning to their activities. 

The Handler’s Certification was a borderline frivolity without any proper Guild paperwork to back it up, but it would at least stop Hikoshi from getting interrogated when she landed over the mountains. 

It also meant something else important. Sumi rolled over on her side, looking at Hikoshi. She was half-lit by the firelight, the frizzy mop of her hair leaving her face in shadow. Sumi appreciated the sight for a time before speaking up.

“So, what are you thinking for your spear?”

“My spear?” 

“Yeah. You’re in the Guild now, which means you can have your own gear. Figured I’d give your spear an upgrade before you go sailing off on your own.”

“I hadn’t really thought of that. I was just thinking of armor.” 

“I’ll get that, too, but we have to decide on your spear first. Best defense is a good offense.”

“I don’t know much about that kind of stuff, as proven by my three out of five score on my Handler certification exam.”

“You’ve been practicing with it for a few days now, even sparred a few times. Do you think you’d like a heavier one, a longer one, one with more or less blade? What about stabbing versus slashing, which do you prefer?” Sumi opened her notebook as she spoke, preparing to take notes.

“Big ol’ sword still isn’t an option?” Hikoshi asked.

“Nope. Making my girlfriend look good still takes second place to keeping my girlfriend alive.”

“You’re too boring, sometimes.” 

“There’s something called a sword-staff, though.” Souta piped up. Sumi glanced at him. “A spear with an extra long blade at the end and a brace just beneath, kind of like the boar spear you’ve got already.”

“How long is the blade on those?” 

“About two feet, I’m guessing. I’ve never seen a Hunter that uses one, just remember seeing one in a weapon collection and thinking it was neat.”

“Seems like it’d be awfully unbalanced,” Sumi said, hesitating. 

“Seems like it’s the closest thing to a sword you’re willing to make me, so I say go for it.” Hikoshi declared. Sumi rolled her eyes, hidden in the darkness. 

“Alright. You want to make me a sketch of it so I know what I should be aiming for, Souta?” 

“Sure. Going to use that Anajnath to make it tomorrow?” 

“Maybe, but I was mainly interested in using it for the pelt. Doesn’t seem like it would be too heavy, and I’d bet it’ll keep warm well.”

“Teeth might make a good blade for it.”

“Doubt it. They’re pointy, but they looked pretty dull on the edges from where I was standing. We’ll see in the morning.”

“You’re the smith.”

They continued to chat through the night, waiting for it to get late enough that they wouldn’t wake before sunrise if they slept. The circle of stakes Sumi had erected in a semi-circle around the camp were far from Guild regulation when it came to warding away Monsters, but she and Souta thought they’d suffice. The Monsters passing them by wouldn’t be on the prowl. They were trying to escape. Challenging a strange group would be the last thing on their minds, they’d reasoned. 

They still retired to the ship to sleep for the night. They weren’t willing to bet their lives on the assumption, after all. Sumi was woken by Souta just before first light, Hikoshi already cooking behind him. 

“Do you know what he said to me?” She started, tone irate. What an excellent start to the day, Sumi reflected. “He told me that the most important job a Handler had was cooking for their Hunter.”

“I--” Souta tried.

“And here I was, already cooking for you two on most days, because you’d already be hungry again by the time you finished making a meal big enough for your fat gullets, and he has the gall to order me to cook anyway?” She banged her utensil on the stove. “I’m going to give him food poisoning. I don’t know how food poisoning works, but I’m about to figure it out.”

Sumi rolled from her hammock, falling to the floor. She had little to console Hikoshi with. “That’s just how he is when he decides you’re his friend. I bet he knew exactly how you’d respond to that. Didn’t you, Souta?”

Hikoshi snapped to his face. “Did you?”

His chagrined frown was ruined by the spreading of an unashamed smile. “Maybe. Maybe not. Who’s to say?”

A lump of lukewarm meat slapped against his face. Souta ducked to grab it between his teeth before it could slip to the floor, gnawing loudly on it. “Thanks, Koshi.”

“Koshi is not going to be my nickname.”

“The more you hate it the more we’ll use it, you know.”

“It means ‘dying’!” She protested. 

Souta was unsympathetic. “Well you are flying off on your own, so it seemed appropriate.” 

It was Sumi’s turn to throw something at Souta. She chose her fist, thudding it into the darkest part of his bruised ribs. He buckled over, wheezing while she stood over him.

“Koshi’s a no-go, understand?”

“Are you still mad because I tried to call you Sue?” He asked. She raised her fist again, prompting him to waddle out of the room, clutching his side as he puffed out his pained laughter. She shook her head, joining Hikoshi at the stove. Her face brightened as Sumi slipped a hand around her waist.

“Oh, are you going to help me coo-- oh, no. You’re just here to steal the meat. That isn’t even warm yet, you know.”

“‘m hungry now, though,” Sumi managed between the tough jerky filling her mouth. “And ‘sides, cooking’s oneatha mosht important jobs ob a handler--”

Sumi was promptly ejected from the cabin, banished to the cargo room, emphasized with a firm closing of the separating curtain. Souta gave her a welcoming wave from where he sat on the floor, slipping on his armor. Sumi joined him, stomach rumbling. 

They finished their meal as the sun first rose over the horizon, lighting the Anjanath corpse from the previous day. Scavengers had ravaged it in the night, tearing its stomach out and spreading the entrails for dozens of feet. Clouds of flies buzzed above the corpse thickly enough to become opaque. 

Sumi lead Souta over regardless, scattering the smaller birds and scavengers away. One group of animals feasting on the corpse held their ground. They were felines, about the size of a jagras, with thin black spikes rising along their spine. The dark coloration was stark against their tan fur, which puffed in anger as the packleader hissed at Sumi’s approach.

Sumi stepped up across Anjanath’s back and hopped forward, drawing her sword as she fell. The blade caught the feline’s swiping paw in mid-swing, neatly severing it to flop to the ground behind her. Before the creature could react she flicked her sword upward, decapitating it. The other felines fled.

She kicked the corpse aside, noting the drops of liquid that tipped the defensive spikes. She pointed it out to Souta, who promptly collected some in a jar to test for toxicity later. It might make a decent poison for his arrows.

The ribcage of the Anajanath had been conveniently opened by the nighttime feast, leaving the bones picked clean for her to evaluate. Most weren’t useful for Hikoshi’s armor, too thick and too heavy for her to constantly wear inside the ship. She focused on slicing away slabs of furred hide, preferring the tops of the legs for their favorable ratio of thickness to flexibility. She couldn’t get to the other leg, which was beneath the multi-ton behemoth’s bulk, but she thought she had enough from what was already exposed. 

Souta collected the Monster’s teeth, even crawling down its throat once again in hopes of finding more mysteriously sharp specimens as he had in the Lacerta. Sumi didn’t know why he bothered, since she knew he’d hunted an Anjanath before. Maybe he liked the idea of heading face-first down a Monster’s throat, the most likely end for someone of their profession. She couldn’t knock him for getting some practice ahead of time.

She absolutely did mock him when he came out covered in blood and flammable slime, admittedly. She wasn’t perfect.

The Monster’s teeth were easy enough to collect, and with the cut having already been started for her by the scavengers, slicing sections of the hide was simple. It was the most routine gutting of a Monster she’d ever undertaken. It still wasn’t easy, of course, nothing involving a Monster possibly could be, but it was more predictable, at least. Souta had decent sketches of its internal anatomy ready to go, which meant she could dissect her way through the meat to find what she was looking for in short order.

It turned out that the ‘wings’ on the top of the Anjanath were supported by an outgrowth of its spinal structure, thin bones some five feet long giving them their shape. They were perfectly straight, unlike the Anjanath’s ribs, and would serve her purposes perfectly. 

She took the spoils back to the camp in several trips with Souta, not for the first time wishing for a cart. Surely the Stellar had launched with enough spare tonnage to include a wheelbarrow, at a minimum? It was a thought for their second journey.

She chuckled darkly to herself, drawing a look from Souta that she ignored. It was awfully optimistic of her to be assuming they’d have a second trip aboard the Stellar. It didn’t even matter if they survived: this mission had gone awry enough that she doubted the Guild would be interested in entrusting the ship to them permanently. .

She asked Hikoshi to bring out one of the Stellar’s room curtains, using it as a tarp to dump their meat on. She doubted it would still be safe to eat after being left out over half a day, but it was worth a shot. Hikoshi would just have to inspect it awfully closely for fly eggs and maggots.

She walked along the shoreline for a time, debating over what would be best for Hikoshi’s spear blade. She still had the Lacerta’s other throat-teeth, but they lacked a tip, which succinctly invalidated most of a spear’s utility. The longest of the Anajanath’s teeth were only ten inches, not enough for the sword-staff she intended on building, and they were round besides that. 

She was flipping through her journal as she paced the muddy beach when her foot thumped on something. She looked down, inspecting the thing. 

It was a fish head, long since skeletonized. It reminded her of what the fishers of her village had called swordfish, but with a much flatter muzzle. Minor serrations lined its edge all the way to what was left of its tip, which had been snapped off. She slipped a glove off and felt at the edge to test its sharpness, predictably giving herself a stinging cut. She hissed and sucked on the wound, appreciating the skull.

It snapped easily under her fingers, unfortunately, rendered too brittle by age and exposure, but it was around the right size for Hikoshi’s spear. Sumi looked up at the lake, appreciating it. Standing at the shore it was large enough that she couldn’t see the other side, large enough to support fish of this size. 

She trudged back up to the camp to inform Hikoshi and Souta of her plan.

Hikoshi thought she was an idiot, but that was alright. It was slightly concerning that Souta eagerly approved of the plan, but she didn’t let it dissuade her. Sumi didn’t trust plans that didn’t seem at least a little bit stupid. She waded into the water while dressed in her full armor, feeling the mud suck at her boots. Aside from her feet the Lacerta hide slid through the water as easily as it did air.

She also noted that it didn’t weigh any less than it did above the surface, though, because she walked straight down into the lake without any sign of floating. She took one last breath as her head went under.

She’d used glass from the broken rear window, which thankfully had lazily swept into a corner instead of properly disposed of, to cover her helmet’s eye slit with glass. She’d used her cheap glue to keep it in place, then used an excessive amount of bandages wrapped around her neck to (slightly) waterproof the joint. It didn’t work very well, water immediately bubbling up beneath her nose, but the combination at least let her see clearly for a time before it would fill. She’d tested while she was above the water and guessed that she could hold her breath for a minute and a half or so.

Her ears popped as she descended, reaching about ten feet beneath the water. Aside from the mud stirred up by her passing the water was as clear as she could ask for a lake, visibility going out ten or twenty feet. It was difficult to gauge distance without landmarks. 

She reached a certain depth, perhaps twelve feet or so, when she noticed something odd. Her feet stopped gaining traction on the muddy floor, pedaling through open water. She looked down, allowing more water to squirt into her helmet, and found herself floating. The sensation was remarkably similar to the feeling of her armor arresting her fall through the sky, so much so she wondered if it was the same property. She tried to paddle herself upward, failing to move herself in the slightest. Only the water that had slipped beneath her armor seemed to have any friction on her body, ignoring the Lacerta hide entirely. A bout of panic took her for a moment as she imagined herself floating off into the murky depths, unable to descend or ascend in a frictionless prison, until she realized that her boots still resisted when she moved. She kicked hard, propelling herself towards the surface.

She took a gasp of air as she broke the water, still kicking furiously. Her armor’s bizarre floating effect was nearly nonexistent at the top of the water, requiring her to struggle just to keep her lips above the gentle waves. She pulled at her helmet, letting the water drain, then let herself fall back down.

She returned to the same height, her armor apparently determined to keep her at exactly this depth. She had no idea why, but she was grateful for it. With this she could head further out into the lake instead of being stuck to the shallow shores. 

She looked around herself, making sure to keep her neck as still as possible. There was little in the way of large fish here, mostly just small schools darting through the vegetation below. She waited for as long as her breath would allow before returning to the surface for more air.

She repeated this a number of times, yet saw nothing larger than her hand. There were plenty of plants, of course, and the fish that fed upon them, but the distinctive swordfish she’d seen was frustratingly absent.

Sumi returned to the shore, confirming that the skull had sharp teeth. She passed through the camp while sopping wet, heading out to the Anjanath kill. She took a moment to roll herself in the gore of its abdomen, slapping a few pieces of meat over her shoulders for good luck, then returned to the lake.

The difference was immense. The schools of fish darted towards her in hordes, picking at the exposed meat on her shoulders. She felt them thumping into her body from every direction, trying to peel any scrap of food from her they could. 

It was almost ticklish, until she felt something slam into her back. The force of it flipped her end over end, scattering the school of fish and sending water spurting up into her helmet.

She spotted the swordfish when she was upside down, recovering from the unexpected recoil a few feet away. She felt at her back and was shocked to find a miniscule dent there, the fish having actually damaged her armor. She wouldn’t have thought anything short of a Monster could do that.

The swordfish recovered with a deceptively human shake of its head, shooting forward towards her again. It didn’t have much open water to accelerate, though, and it hit her with far less force. The point of its blade stuck in her chestplate for a minute, so she wrapped her arms around its gills and began to squeeze.

The swordfish immediately pummeled the water with its tail, shooting them both forward. Sumi could actually hear how fast the water was rushing past her as her helmet filled with water, covering her eyes. She was forced to shut them, moving by feel.

She shoved a hand up the gill slits of the swordfish, trying to find something important within to crush or tear out. It spasmed wildly as she clawed at its insides, but its pace didn’t change. She felt it dive, climb, spin and roll in rapid succession, but she didn’t let go. For a confusing moment she even felt air rushing against her neck, but it was too brief to grab a breath. 

She was forearm deep in fish gill when she gave up on killing it that way, releasing her other hand to grab her knife from her belt. She gripped it with terrifying force, knowing that dropping it in the lake would mean it was gone forever. She started a cut on a random spot on the swordfish, dragging the knife towards its eyes. The knife met some kind of resistance there, bony and sturdy. She grunted and felt it crack as she drove the knife deeper.

The fish’s struggles stopped all at once, dead in her arms. 

Her lungs were burning. 

Sumi kicked hard for the surface, trying to use the fish’s corpse as a paddle to propel herself upwards. She felt her head break the surface but didn’t feel cool air on her lips, the imperfectly sealed helmet still filled with water. She ripped it off forcefully enough that she felt a bundle of her hair come with it, tangled in her fingers.

She couldn’t hold herself up for long. She took deep, heaving breaths of air, looking around herself. The fish had dragged her deeper into the lake, several hundred yards from the camp. It was an easy distance to swim on any other occasion, but the ten foot fish attached to her arm changed things quite drastically.

Sumi slipped her helmet back on as she let herself fall back down, tearing off the water proofing now that she had no need to see. She began kicking herself toward the shore, trying her hardest to hold her breath for as long as possible.

She made slow progress, bobbing to the surface every minute or so to steal a few desperate gulps of air. When she was below she could feel dozens of smaller fish tugging at the swordfish’s body, delighting in the free meal. She only wanted the skull, which was inedible, so she didn’t do much to dissuade them, focusing on swimming.

Which made it all the more disconcerting when the tugging at her arm abruptly stopped. She waved her off hand around, feeling for the fish. They were gone.

Sumi forced her eyes open, spinning around. Everything was a burning blur in the murky water, tinged with clouds of blood from the fish on her arm. She could still discern a black form in the water, approaching leisurely. 

It was fifteen feet long, with a pointed snout sprouting snaggle-toothed teeth. Its tail swept lazily from side to side, short legs tucked up beneath itself. Sumi’s heart pounded, blood roaring in her ears. A crocodile.

She tore her knife from her belt again, sawing at the corpse on her hand. Blood spurted into the water in huge clouds, her thrashing drawing the crocodile closer. It was maybe five feet away when she managed to slice through the last of the connective tissue, freeing the bloody fish to drift away from her.

The crocodile turned at the last second, mouth latching onto the corpse with an audible clack. Sumi kicked away from it furiously, every single memory of what a crocodile left behind flitting unprompted through her mind. It didn’t matter if she’d killed a Great Jagras, fended off a Rathian, or killed a Lacerta. This was the first thing she’d faced that she knew for certain had killed people she’d known, maimed others, and stolen dozens of livestock. She knew the patterns of its bite far too well, and utterly refused to have that mark left on her. 

Sumi reached the shore in minutes, sprinting out as soon as she felt her boots touch ground. She didn’t stop when she reached the muddy beach, pedaling her legs until she was on grass thirty feet or more from the waterline. Only then did she drop the swordfish’s head, flopping onto her back to rest.

She lifted her head to look down at the water she’d just emerged from, still rippling with her passage. In her wake sat a single tree log, unremarkable and uninteresting. A moment passed, and then the log sank, kicking up a cloud of blood as it disappeared. Sumi shuddered.

Chapter Text

Hikoshi

The spear was completed by the end of the day. Hikoshi held it to the light, admiring its silhouette. Most Hunters had bulkier weapons than a spear, for durability, but this one would do her fine.

It had an etched bone haft, wrapped in Lacerta hide in the spots one she put her hands. The black scutes and ivory bone contrasted well, even if it hadn’t been Sumi’s intention. The spearpoint, a sawed-off head of a swordfish, was an excellent choice for a weapon. Its edges were sharp, gliding through the wood she used for target practice, while its tip narrowed to an invisible point that carved through the log like air. The blue shade of the bony protrusion would fade in time, but it gleamed in the morning sun for now. 

The swordstaff’s guard was made of sparkling white Anjanath fangs, curving upward to catch blows sliding down the blade. Sumi had selected the sharpest teeth of the collection Souta had pulled, so that even a swing that failed to connect with the blade could still impale the target. Sumi had told her it would also serve as a billhook of sorts, able to impale a limb and pull the animal off-balance. 

Hikoshi had been buried nose-deep in a book when Sumi had presented it to her, trying to distract herself from pestering Sumi while she worked. She’d been mostly successful, only cracking a few jokes. 

Now she was twirling the weapon while facing her diminutive partner, who held her orange shield ready alongside a whittled practice sword. Hikoshi fell into her stance, dropping low. 

Sumi darted forward, shield raised so only her eyes peeked above it. Hikoshi met her approach with the tip of the spear, trying to pass it under her guard to pierce her gut.

The shield moved faster than Hikoshi could process, knocking the blow sailing harmlessly aside. Hikoshi spun the spear in her hand, pulling it backward. The guard hooked the back of the shield and pulled it forward, stumbling Sumi in her charge.

That hook saved Hikoshi, turning a lunging jab into an uncoordinated mess. Hikoshi tried to seize the moment by going in for another stab, but found her spear locked between the shield and Sumi’s body. Sumi spun to the side, ripping the spear out of Hikoshi’s hand. 

The wooden sword came for her head fast enough to whistle, deflecting at the last second as Sumi pulled the blow. Instead of crushing a hole in her head it lightly tapped at her collarbone, just enough to sting. 

Sumi pulled back, imitating polite applause by tapping her sword against the shield.

“That was a pretty good hook you had there. I bet you would have had me if I wasn’t a Hunter.”

“It was pretty good, wasn’t it?” Hikoshi agreed, walking to pick her spear from the dirt. “But could an animal react that fast?”

“Faster.”

“So I still need work.”

“Sorry you haven’t mastered combat in four days, babe.”

“Let’s go again.”

The sun was setting to their side, scattering blinding rays across the lakeside. She had to squint as she circled back around, which gave her an idea. 

Hikoshi skittered backward as Sumi charged this time, keeping the distance by constantly flicking off probing stabs. She led them in a subtle circle as she went, pretending that she was trying to prolong the match as much as possible.

She watched Sumi’s eyes closely the whole time, visible through the narrow slit in her helmet. She waited for the exact moment that a spot of light, bounced off the lakewater, flitted through that narrow slot. 

Her spear blinked forward, blade skating along the side of Sumi’s shin. The crossguard caught her right leg mid step, shoving it backward. Hikoshi carried the motion through to really get her off balance, then yanked back and to the left. The Anjanath tooth caught behind Sumi’s other ankle and pulled it out from underneath her, driving her to the ground.

Hikoshi gave the front of Hikoshi’s armor a light tap, claiming the victory. It was the first of twenty that she’d won.

“Damn, Hikoshi, nice work.” Sumi pushed off the ground hard enough to throw herself into the air, landing on her feet. Hikoshi resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the less-than-subtle reminder that Sumi could have fought very differently. “But that wasn’t a kill shot at the end. Got to make sure you end it as soon as you can.”

“I could have shoved it up your weird armor skirt thing, you know. Decided I liked you without any extra holes.”

“Appreciate the thought, if not the phrasing, but I would’ve been fine after a bit of potion. Whole point of sparring with a Hunter is to let you practice in ways you normally couldn’t, hit like you would in a real fight.” She dusted herself off. “And it’s not a skirt. It’s a fauld, which is a very common-”

“-kind of skirt, yes, I know.”

It was Sumi’s turn to huff in annoyance, but the ghost of a smile pulled at the corners of her lips. She didn’t bother to argue, sighing contentedly instead. “I wish we could spend the next week sparring. This is way more fun than I expected it to be.”

“Thinking about joining the Guild’s investigation teams? Get yourself a taste of some real combat?”

“Ugh, no thank you. It’s only fun when I’m not killing anyone.”

“Lack of murder is an important feature of most sports, I’ve heard.”

“This wasn’t supposed to be a sports match. It was a training session.”

“It was, it was. Until about ten matches ago, at least, when I realized how bad I wanted to win.”

“Mission accomplished, I guess. Ready to call it for the day?”

Hikoshi shaded her eyes to look at the sun. It was going to be dark soon. “I guess. We’ll have to get some more matches in tomorrow, before I leave.”

“You’re leaving tomorrow?”

“If you finish the rest of my gear, yeah. No point in putting it off.”

“I was going to start on it tonight, but if that’s the only thing keeping you here…”

“You’re going to start right away?” Souta shouted from across the camp, voice filled with hope. Sumi laughed.

“Shut up over there. Don’t you have poisons to drink?”

“I’m feeling one out right now. Wondering if my legs are falling asleep or if the numbness is from the cone snail venom.”

Hikoshi blanched at their casual tone. Souta’s scouting efforts earlier in the day had found a number of small animals that he expected to secrete poison, so now he was testing his theories. The methodology, apparently, involved rubbing the various goops and slimes into his open mouth or a wound to see what happened. More than once they’d heard him yelping in a mix of pain and excitement, as happy to have found a useful poison as he was in pain. 

Sumi had reassured her that he had a variety of antidotes that would almost certainly cover anything he ingested, but Hikoshi still couldn’t believe he was being his own test subject. Apparently catching fish or luring an animal to use would have taken too long. 

“And besides,” Sumi had said, “We’d feel bad torturing an animal like that.”

“But torturing Souta is fine?” Hikoshi had asked.

“I mean, do you feel bad? He’s literally doing it to himself.”

She didn’t feel bad, but she definitely felt confused. And a little bit intimidated, if she was honest. She’d watched as he’d marveled over a red infection worming its way through his veins like a child might watch a kitten opening its eyes for the first time. He’d marked the success in his book while shouting pained profanities before applying a salve, grinning all the while.

She was glad she’d gotten a job with the Guild, and she was excited that she’d been allowed to use Monster gear, but after watching Sumi and Souta work she was absolutely certain the airship life was for her. Sumi had drug herself back to camp soaking wet holding a bloody skull, telling the story of how she’d nearly drowned or been eaten a half-dozen times in as many minutes, and she’d been smiling the entire time. When she’d talked about the crocodile trying to eat her Souta laughed. 

Hikoshi was grateful for the weapons and armor, but she was also keenly aware that the best case scenario would leave them useless for her whole trip. Only her knowledge that the best case scenario was wildly unlikely to occur kept her motivated to accept them. 

The next day was her last before departing. She would give the ship one last once-over while Sumi made her armor and then that was it. She’d be off on her own. Her gut broiled with anxiety. The day came to a close too quickly, the next morning flashing past, until Sumi was presenting her finished armor.

Sumi’s expertise had always been in metalworking, and that much was obvious as she presented Hikoshi with the armor of stitched Anjanath hide. It was stiffer than her leather aviator’s jacket, but not enough to restrict her movement. It was a half-inch thick, the Anjanath’s black fur covering most of the pebbled ruby skin beneath, save for the joints, which were a bright contrasting red. The fur, it turned out, was really a pelt of incredibly dense and tiny feathers, so closely woven together that scratching the jacket made her feel like she was running her nails along chainmail. 

“Does it fit?” Sumi asked nervously. 

Hikoshi raised an eyebrow. “I’d have thought you got my measurements pretty well memorized last night.”

Souta gagged. Sumi laughed. The jacket slipped easily over her shoulders, pinned together with three thick bolts of steel above her waist, sternum, and clavicle. It didn’t have a proper collar, which was where the chainmail Sumi had made earlier came in handy. 

Hikoshi slipped on the helmet Sumi had made, modeled after her aviator’s cap. It was more reinforced than the jacket, heavier, on account of interwoven bones that gave it its strength. Flaps of skin fell from the helmet to cover her ears, open bolts placed right where an ear piercing would be to attach the chainmail to. Hikoshi pulled the chainmail up, covering her neck and the lower half of her face. She ran her hand over the top of the helmet, feeling the prominent ridges that the bones beneath the skin made. 

“Hm. You need to do something about that hair.” Souta decided. 

Hikoshi’s long and curly hair, convenient for staying warm in the clouds, now bunched up awkwardly under the helmet and spilled out from the gaps. She turned her head to disagree with Souta, but a strand of it caught in the chainmail. She yelped as it was torn out, her rebuttal dying in her life.

“You’re not cutting your hair.” Sumi stated to Hikoshi, glaring at Souta.

“I’m not cutting my hair.” She agreed. “I’ll find some way to get it under control. Maybe I should get it wet so I can pin it back before I put the helmet on?”

“Oh, great idea, Koshi,” Souta drawled. “Just make sure to ask the Monster attacking the ship for a time-out before it kills you, so you can find a bucket and some hair ties.”

“Counterpoint, smartass: if I’m under attack I really don’t think I’ll care if my hair gets pinched by my helmet.”

“You will when a Monster grabs it and uses it to break your neck.”

“I’m using a swordstaff. If anything gets close enough to grab my hair I’m dead anyway.”

“Only if you don’t cut your hair.”

She shoved him, prompting him to break into a grin. She was learning that pessimism was Souta’s way of saying he was worried about her. It was an annoying way to express the sentiment, but she didn’t mind the verbal sparring. After all, she was about to spend several weeks with only herself for company. 

Her armored leggings were simple enough to pull over her pants, Sumi’s hands-on experience once again proving reliable. Her knees were protected by chips of bowl-shaped bone, a stark white next to the blood-red skin and black feathery fur. Her boots had been replaced with Sumi’s old steel pair, lengthened to fit her larger feet. They were an odd break in her appearance, silvery sheen anachronistic next to the primal leather and bones, but it was all they had. She’d already decided to paint them black later, so they’d at least match the rest of her armor. 

“How do I look?” Hikoshi asked, grabbing her swordstaff off the ground. She planted the butt into the ground, striking a guardsman’s pose.

“Like a Hunter.” Souta answered approvingly.

“Damn good.” Sumi said, not quite leering. 

Souta gave her a look somewhere between exasperated and appalled. “Will you two ever chill? Just a little bit?”

“Not so long as you keep giving us reactions like that, no.”

“Ugh.” Souta shuddered performatively. But then he sobered, meeting Hikoshi’s eyes. He offered her his gauntleted hand. “Be safe out there, alright?”

She shook it, their armored hands scraping together. “I will be. Don’t kill the Dragon too fast, alright? The Guild will be mad if I drag them all the way out here for no reason.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Sumi jumped up to wrap her arms around Hikoshi’s neck, dragging her down. Her armor was too damn heavy for Hikoshi to hold her up. 

“I’m gonna be so pissed if you die, understand?”

Hikoshi laughed. “Same here.”

Sumi’s eyes hardened. She took Hikoshi by the sides of her helmet, pulling her close. “No jokes. Promise me you’ll keep yourself safe.”

“I--”

“I mean it, Hikoshi. The most important thing on that ship is you , understand? It doesn’t matter if the message gets there or not. It doesn’t matter if the Stellar has to go down in flames. All that matters is that you make it back to me, understand?”

Hikoshi met Sumi’s eyes, nodding as much as she could while locked in the smaller girl’s grip. “I promise.”

Sumi released her, taking a step back. Hikoshi dropped her spear and closed the distance, wrapping her in a proper hug. It wasn’t particularly satisfying, what with the three inches of armor separating them, but it was all she had to offer in the moment. Sumi returned the effort, nuzzling into her shoulder.

Hikoshi let go reluctantly, slowly. Souta stayed uncharacteristically quiet at the display, clapping a hand on her shoulder as Hikoshi pulled away. Not trusting herself to speak any longer, Hikoshi grabbed her spear and stepped into the Stellar, pulling the door shut behind her. As it clicked she heard Sumi muttering to Souta.

“I’m too young to be turning into my mother.”

“I thought it was sweet.”

Hikoshi blushed, taking her place at the wheel. The last of the docking ropes had been cut by Souta on the night of the rampage, so taking off was as simple as a few twitches of the controls. As the ship floated gently upwards Hikoshi pushed the throttle forward, turning the Stellar northward. Sumi and Souta appeared out of the window to her right, waving goodbye. She returned the wave, pretending for the moment that they could see her through the glare on the glass.

The trip north was melancholy. She rode the winds to the highest altitude she could straight away, no longer concerned with finding a landing zone. Clouds passed her by on either side, too sparse to need avoiding. The pondlands came into view within hours, as strange as always. At this altitude, some ten thousand feet above the earth, she could find patterns in it that she couldn’t before. It seemed the entire region was bowl-shaped, a gentle crater that reached its lowest at the small grove they’d spent a week resting in.

It took two days to traverse the porous plains, little requiring documentation on her map. She spent the time reading from the collection Souta had left with her or fiddling with her equipment, meticulously working her way through the ritualistic maintenance regimen Sumi had prepared for her. Monster equipment, it seemed, required far more effort than common materials. Letting them sit unused would end with the tools shriveled and brittle, worse than simple iron. 

She spotted several things flying beneath her while she traveled the pondlands. One was large enough that she could only assume it was a Monster, though it was too far away to identify. Other times she saw flocks of large creatures, traveling in the dozens. They seemed to shadow the brown herds that wove their way across the grasslands below.

She passed out of the pondlands on the second day, shortly after she awoke. Her course had drifted as she slept, an unavoidable consequence of flying through the night. She had only the slightest remnants of starlight from which to estimate her position before the sun rose, leaving her with only a compass to navigate. She continued north, tracking her estimated position on her map with a chunk of leftover ration. 

Reaching Narrowstraight would have required her to retread their path, passing over the same lands she had before, but that wasn’t what she was doing. Her only priority was finding the first Guild contact possible, then making a plan from there. As a result she was heading for the closest village marked on her charts, which meant taking a course that snaked directly north. 

It also meant that she’d be passing over unexplored terrain, unprepared for what lived there. She kept the Stellar floating at the razor edge of maximum altitude, welcoming the chill air with open arms. Every foot that separated her from the terrain below was another thin thread of safety that kept her in the air. She flew as high as she ever had, higher than any of the jobs she’d taken before required. The air felt thin, her breath misting in the air despite the engine’s heat behind her. Sumi and Souta couldn’t have tolerated this height for long, but she could manage.

The winds this high were faster, brutal, but consistent. She lost time on the rare occasions where the currents changed unexpectedly, overpowering the engine to blow her off course, but she felt the added safety was worth the occasional setbacks. 

She was two days from the mountains when she decided that her isolation was starting to get to her. Four days of her only companion being the clicking, hissing, banging tones of steam and a whirring propeller. She found herself singing to the engine as she refueled it, whispering the same song her mother had sung to her as a child to convince Hikoshi to eat something that she detested. The bizarre psychological implications of that subconscious connection were not lost on her. 

She had also named the engine, which probably didn’t help. The Stellar was the ship’s name, and she was a fine companion, but Hikoshi decided she was more a city composed of individuals than a singular person. The engine was named Misty, on account of the white trail of steam she poured out behind the ship, while the propeller was named Choppy, because she hadn’t spoken a word aloud in four days and there was no one to mock her for lacking originality. 

It was on that fourth day, when she was warming her hands after feeding Misty, that she heard an unfamiliar thumping soak through the hull. Hikoshi jumped out of the engine cubby, grabbing her cap off the hook near her hammock and slipping it on. She buckled her jacket up as she returned to the helm, peering out the windows.

A long beak greeted her to the right, ending in a curved hook after a foot and a half of toothy snout. The thumping continued, recognizable now as the slow beat of wings. She inched forward.

The Stellar had become the head of a flock of flying animals, each with a wingspan several feet longer than she was tall. They were familiar enough to her to send a tingle of fear down her spine. Teros. Skin stretched over bony wings, ending in sharp talons on either side. A bony dorsal ridge rose from the head, acting as a sail that turned the creatures towards whatever direction they looked, beady blue eyes set in hollow sockets underneath. 

The snout moved forward, exposing its eyes. The creature had landed on the side of the Stellar, gripping the webbed roping there as it did cliffsides. She froze as its eye locked on to her, staring.

The head pulled back, readying itself. 

God, she hated teros. 

Its beak lunged forward, shattering the glass window. Hikoshi dove for her swordstaff as the creature shook its head wildly, slamming the beak repeatedly into the wooden frame with a hollow clattering sound. She’d yet to meet a teros that had managed to force the concept of glass into their tiny brains. 

Hikoshi brought the swordstaff up as the creature forced itself through the now-open window, cutting itself on shards of glass. Blue blood dripped onto the deck, another stain for the collection.

Hikoshi jabbed the spear forward, pinning the teros’ wing to the wall. It squawked furiously, gnawing at the blade. It only managed to cut its mouth on the edge, which didn’t deter it in the slightest.

She pulled her swordstaff back, aiming for its chest this time, when glass shattered behind her. Hikoshi spun around, trying to face the new threat, but her spear was too long, slicing straight through one of the map table’s legs. She cursed as she choked up on the shaft, bringing the blade closer to her body. 

A second teros was forcing its way into the cabin next to the tarp-covered window Souta had already shattered, trying to raise its wings in intimidating fashion. It didn’t have enough room, which meant its claws awkwardly thumped into the roof while its left wing only halfway unfolded, scraping against the wall. Half-crumpled, looking incredibly uncomfortable, it screeched in furious challenge.

Hikoshi pierced it through the throat, turning the screech into a crackling gargle. She twisted the blade as she removed it, reverberations of cracking bones making their way back up the shaft. 

She felt something clamp around her right leg and looked down. The first teros was gnawing on her shin, tiny dagger teeth doing less than nothing to the thick Anjanath hide. She popped the butt of her spear down, thumping it in the head. The creature yelped in surprise, pulling back. Its expression seemed almost… offended? As if it was incredibly rude of her to not have skin that was easily torn open. 

Hikoshi pivoted, spinning her spear around to bring it up beneath the thing’s chin, bisecting its mouth. She twisted the swordstaff in her hand and brought it back down in a single motion, impaling the teros with an Anjanath fang. It dropped dead.

Glass exploded to her left, twice in rapid succession. 

“Why can’t you idiot use the open windows?!” She yelled at the two new intruders. They’d shattered the windows at the very front of the ship, just in front of the wheel. One crawled through, reaching out a talon to grip the wheel for balance. “No, no, no!” She shouted. 

The teros didn’t seem to understand.

The entire ship was jerked to the right as the teros put its weight on the wheel, throwing her to the side. She heard several of the creatures, still flying alongside the ship, get broken against the hull with a ripple of popping bones. She hoped they were conscious enough to be in pain for the long fall down.

Hikoshi lunged forward, practiced form disappearing beneath frustration. The teros made a small meep? of mild interest as it saw the spear lancing towards its eye, then said nothing at all as its corpse was driven from the ship. The teros to the left saw this happen and decided to leave, falling backward off the windowsill with all the grace of an acrobat. Hikoshi ran forward, grabbing the wheel to right it.

The Stellar straightened with a groan, not appreciating the stresses it was undergoing. Between the engine, high-speed winds, and idiotic manuevers, she knew she should be glad none of the control cables snapped.

Course corrected, Sumi returned to the open window. Some of the teros were still flying alongside the ship, eyes brightening in interest as they saw her appear in the window. Hikoshi shouted incoherently at them, bending over to grip one of the corpses at her feet. She flung it out the window as hard as she could, spraying blood everywhere. 

The flock of teros recoiled, dropping out of formation with the ship. She went to the port side to make sure there weren’t more, relieved to see them following their fellows peeling away. Only then did she let her shoulders relax, breathing hard.

Glass was scattered across the deck. Her map table was leaning at an awkward angle, only three legs to support it. Wind whipped through the cabin from three new empty windows, achingly cold. Hikoshi just stood there, trying to think of what she should do next.

She elected to stand in place, letting loose a string of profanities for the next several minutes. She stabbed the remaining teros corpse a few times for emphasis, interrogating it about its genealogical history and where exactly in the family tree one of its mothers had married the world’s most idiotic rat, a fact that was self-evident to her. It didn’t answer beyond spurts of blue blood that stained the deck further, darkening to purple against the lacquered wood.

She finally stopped, looking around at the mess. She had no idea how she was going to fix half of this.

Two hours later Hikoshi was dangling from the back of the envelope, ignoring the mile drop to the ground beneath her. Her blood-soaked upper body had burst out from the rear of the envelope, holding a kitchen knife in one hand, resembling her worst childhood fears of what childbirth would look like. 

The only place with enough material to cover up the windows was the leather envelope covering the ship, so she’d decided to cut out the rearmost portions. She was far from an expert in aerodynamics, so she’d relied on intuition alone when deciding what the least important part of the Stellar’s skin was. Her reasoning began and ended with the idea that at least this side wasn’t directly facing the wind, so it was probably fine, right? 

She’d see soon enough. She gathered up her bundles of scrap leather and returned below to patch the windows. Four broken, four remained. She had all the peripheral vision of a one-eyed flounder.

The symmetrical forest spread further than she’d thought possible. Even here, so far away from their original course, it stretched out beneath her. The mountain range was a little more than a day away, tip of the range just poking over the horizon. She hadn’t expected to find the familiar forest here, hundreds of miles away from where she’d crossed it the first time.

And she hadn't expected to find out what had made Sumi and Souta so nervous on their first trip through the forest. She mistook it for a cloud, at first, until it moved. Great white wings collapsed in the sky, driving some Monstrous body upward. It was miles away, indistinct, yet massive. It could have eaten a Rathian as easily as a Rathian could eat her. She turned the ship away from it on instinct alone, refusing to get any closer. 

The creature had no such compulsions. A single great wing dipped low, banking the mountainous Monster toward her path. Hikoshi tilted the ship down, turning her altitude into speed, and pushed the throttle just a little bit further than she probably should. The Monster was visible through the rearmost window, a pale silhouette against blue sky. 

It seemed to flap its wings a mere handful of times per minute to stay aloft, uncaring of that fact’s impossibility. It matched her speed, hanging in a single spot behind her as if affixed there.

It would catch her once she ran out of altitude to dump. Her mind raced, trying to work her way through everything she’d learned about Monsters since the Listless had first crashed in that jungle. She summoned up an image of Souta and Sumi to either side of her, plying them for advice. They had none, as they were figments of her imagination. Souta’s shade made a crude joke about himself, Sumi’s a crude joke about Hikoshi. She gave up, trying to think of something, anything.

She ended up gambling on a random guess, deciding that the massive Monster was territorial. Maybe it saw her as a threat to its forest domain, a rival beast in the sky. She gave up escaping it, turning the Stellar due north. The end of the forest was tantalizingly close, just on the edge of vision. The rolling hills that would become the Southern Mountain Range began there. Maybe the Monster wouldn’t pursue her beyond the boundaries of the symmetrical forest.

She ran out of altitude soon after, the Stellar's bow skimming along treetops. The creature was undeniably pursuing her now, tucked into a slight dive that would bring itself into contact with the ship. Hikoshi’s hands shook on the wheel, leg bouncing, instincts demanding that she run. Her mind knew that she could do nothing more than grip the wheel in front of her. 

The creature had drawn close enough to make out details. Its head was thick and oval-shaped, diminutive when placed next to its massive wings and body. A thin tail floated out far behind it, curving without concern for anything like gravity or wind. Black nubs, running in symmetrical lines from its snout, over its head, and then down its spine, provided the only splash of color to its body. Even its talons, each as long as the Stellar’s gondola, were stark white. She imagined that she could see their razor tips glittering in the sunlight. 

She reached the hills when the Monster was close enough to make its wingbeats audible, an overwhelming rush of air that shook the sky for hundreds of yards. Sumi whispered silent prayers as the trees faded away, ceding ground to the rough shrubland that would grow into rolling hills. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the Monster again. 

She heard, or more accurately felt , another beat of its wings rattling the few windows she had left. She kept whispering, nudging the throttle just a little bit further. The rattle that had preceded the engine’s earlier explosion began to sound, setting her heart sympathetically shaking in her chest. She didn’t let up. 

A second wingbeat rocked the ship. Hikoshi opened her eyes, craning her neck around. It hadn’t sounded as loud as the previous.

A profound relief filled her when she was faced with the cataclysmic Monster’s tail, not its head. The creature was turning, returning to its patrol along the length of the forest. Hikoshi’s knees wobbled, ready to fall from beneath her, but she kept standing, making adjustments, unwilling to allow herself the break.

The mountains were coming. 

The sun was setting to her left as she stared down the barrel of the peaks. Sunlight filtered through the cabin, catching motes of floating dust. The mountains here were taller than the ones she’d crossed before, but she’d been able to scout them in the daytime. She’d chosen her crossing, a thin V where two valleys happened to meet. She was worried about hypoxia if she flew over the mountains outright, so this was her one shot. The wind was blustering, ripping itself over the rocks to cascade down below. She would have only a hundred feet of clearance on either side of the ship when she passed through.

It had been fourteen hours since she last slept.

She tore down the window tarps so she could see, letting icy air blast into the cabin. She’d layered up every piece of clothing she’d brought, her Anjanath jacket buckled tightly on top. The engine was filled with fuel, nearly the last of her diminishing supplies, but even its heat couldn’t reach her. The wind stole it away, leaving ice and fog on the glass instead.

Hikoshi tapped the wheel from side to side, the smallest adjustments she could possibly manage. The valley was a wind tunnel, channeling the warmer air from the desert beyond to race over the heights. As she approached its mouth the ship slowed, fighting against the current. The engine was the only thing keeping her moving forward, covering ground slower than a walking pace. 

A burst of wind hit her from the side, trying to drive her into a wall. She corrected for the motion, avoiding a collision, but the wind seized the Stellar’s broadside to push her backwards. She lost all the ground she’d gained.

Night fell as she tried to cross the half-mile gap in the mountains, the roar of the engine bouncing off the walls beside her. The night was dark, moon a slight sliver in the sky. She could only tell when she was approaching a wall by the echoes of the propeller, thudding reverberations bouncing off the cold stone. That always forced her to adjust the ship’s course slightly to one side, which in turn slowed her pace even further, or even cost her progress by dragging her backward. She spent twelve hours in the dark in this fashion, her last moment of sleep nearing a full day gone. 

When the sun rose she saw that she was, perhaps, three quarters of the way through the valley. Her hands were blue and shaking on the wheel, her metal gloves discarded so she could alternate shoving one of them into her armpit for warmth. She wasn’t sure if it was frostbite that tinged the tips of her fingers purple, but knowing if it was wouldn’t change a thing. She had to stay at the wheel.

It took six more hours to pass through the last of the valley. She felt the ground dip away by the way the Stellar was suddenly tugged, the winds that were shunted downward by the mountain face grabbing the ship. She was too tired to be excited, too cold to celebrate. She pressed a numb foot to a pedal, encouraging the dive. Her body lightened as the ship fell, cliffside racing past behind her dozens of feet away. She didn’t care. All she knew was that it was warmer down there.

The wind eventually spat her out above the craggy mountainside, freeing her to maneuver on her own. She immediately headed toward the closest valley, angled so steeply that her chest was pressed up against the wheel. Her body twitched against the wheel by the whims of her subconscious, sleep having long since passed into shrouded myth. 

She reached the desert an hour later, eyes fluttering. She didn’t think to adjust the Stellar’s descent, letting it slam into the sand. Belatedly, when she heard the propeller chopping against the ground, she thought to pull the throttle back. She stood from the wheel, feeling the ship lift itself away. 

Hikoshi ripped down the trap door, clambering up the ladder Sumi had made her to the envelope. She stumbled across the ropes, holding herself with her hands as much as her legs, tightening the gas bags to choke away the Stellar’s buoyancy. She should have adjusted more, but she didn’t. She fell back down through the trapdoor instead, unsure if she meant to. But the ship wasn’t floating away anymore. She rolled onto her stomach and crawled towards the door, shoving it open. Golden sand spilled in, hot and beautiful. Hikoshi stuffed her hands into the simmering dune, ignoring the way it burned, and closed her eyes. 

She’d wake up later. 

Hopefully.

Chapter Text

Hikoshi did in fact wake up. What’s more, she woke up in one of the most beautiful states of being she thought she’d ever experienced: hot and sweaty. Her hands were tingling with warmth in the sand, the chainmail covering the back of her neck heated enough to burn. 

Another interesting thing about waking up she discovered was the position of the sun, which was just touching the horizon. In the east. Which meant she’d been asleep face-down in the sand for the better part of a full day.

There was also something chewing on her hair. She should have noticed that sooner, she decided. She should also react to it. She must have been very tired. Hikoshi felt a sharp peck on her skull that finally urged her to motion, raising her head out of her small personal wind-built mound. 

She spat sand into the face of a vulture. It hopped backward in fluttering surprise, strands of hair dangling from its mouth. Way too many, in fact, a bundle larger than its head clenched between its beak. Hikoshi reached up to feel her head and found a blatant bald spot just above her right ear.

Her right hand snapped up, trying to choke the life out of the thing. It fluttered backward again, squawking indignantly. 

“Thought I was dead, didn’t you, you stupid little bastard?” Hikoshi guessed with a startlingly raspy voice. The bird tilted its head in confusion, not offering a retort. She grabbed a pile of sand and threw it at the damned thing. It saw the toss coming and stepped to the side, eyes still glittering with interest. 

Hikoshi groaned, finally forcing herself to her feet. Her muscles ached, whether from the twenty-four hour ground nap or the probable frostbite or some other injury she couldn’t identify at the moment. Her neck crackled as she rolled it, vicious sunburn forcing a hiss of pain between her teeth. Her forearms were similarly burned, the deep red there not boding well for the similar sensation she felt on a single side of her face. 

Hikoshi limped back into the ship, shutting the door behind her. She stumbled to the back, smacking lips alerting her to how thirsty she was. Between flying the ship through the winds and sleeping for so long, she guessed she’d gone the better part of two days without water. She dropped to her knees before the cabinet that held the water jugs, ripping the door open. 

She gulped the hot water for a long, long time, filling herself until the thought of another swallow made her nauseous. She opened another cabinet and stuffed rations into her mouth, the crunchy jerky hurting her damaged throat as it went down. She took another gulp of water after that, the ration’s preservative salt leaving her mouth dry again.

She smeared a palm across her mouth, heading for the helm. Yanking down the trapdoor to the envelope took a few tries, but she managed. Climbing the ladder up took a while longer, resting every other step. She could feel heat rolling out of the envelope, leather balloon turned into an oven under the baking desert sun. She crawled up the stairs anyway, loosening the ties that kept the hydrogen compressed. She did that to several of the gas bags. She was supposed to pay attention to how many she did, but she didn’t, which was probably fine.The ship lifted beneath her, floating upward, so she only loosened a few more. Two, she thought? 

Her left foot found the ladder, her right foot didn’t. She fell a couple down before she grabbed the ladder, which let her guide herself down a bit further.

She left the ladder down, because lifting it up seemed like a pain. Besides, it made a convenient back rest to look at the map from.

Hikoshi shook her head, trying to force the fog from her mind. Pain raced across the skin of her neck instead, a whimper filling the helm. The pain woke her up at least. 

She knew where she’d crossed the mountains, and she could have only traveled a dozen miles or so to reach the desert. She moved the dried jerky marker that represented herself, forcing her tortured mind to work through the math as she eyed the line it drew between itself and the nearest village. 

With Misty working she should arrive before the sun set. That was something, she thought. She hadn’t started Misty while she was in the back. Now she’d have to walk back.

Hikoshi limped to the back, nearly tripping to fall down into the still-open engine cubby. Misty sat cold. She’d never turned her off in the night, just let her burn through the last of her fuel. Hikoshi turned around to the cargo room, yanking the last box of coal onto its side, spilling the contents across the ash marks Souta’s superheated armor had left some weeks before. She booted the fuel towards the engine cubby, most of the chunks landing inside. Some went over by the stove, but who cared?

She fell down into the engine cubby, opening Misty’s mouth. She fed her all the coal she had in reach, then shut the door. She tried to start the engine, then opened the door again. She hadn’t started the fire. Hikoshi smacked the fire starter together, cursing to herself. She hoped her and Sumi’s next daughter wouldn’t be half as hungry as this one.

The fire started, the engine with it. She pulled herself out of the engine room, returning to the helm. The Stellar had ended up pretty high by now, cold air coming through the broken windows. Against her burned skin, it actually felt good.

Upon taking the wheel she found that the Stellar was pulling distinctly to the left. She could countermand the impulse, but it was strange. She turned to look out the back window, seeing the propeller beyond wobbling like mad. Ah yes, she’d forgotten. It had been forcibly stopped via a direct and liberal application of desert. 

She turned back around, ignoring the rattling. It would break or it wouldn’t, she didn’t care which. It couldn’t tear the ship in half, and that was what mattered. She turned toward the village, trying to find a convenient air current. 

The trip there was ill-remembered and iller-piloted, ship bobbing and weaving like a drunken dancer through the clouds. She got there in the end, though, even if it was only by the virtue of night falling. Torchlight glowed within a far-off canyon, a dozen or more miles away from where she thought the village ought to be. She turned to it anyway, Stellar side-slipping in a graceless downward spiral on account of her off-kilter engine. She skidded to a stop on a cracked plateau a few hundred yards away from the village, greeted by a small crowd. They were shouting at her, asking questions that she didn’t have the energy to shout answers back for. She just waved them closer.

Eventually a pair of them came up, two men dressed in loose black clothing. She was trying to climb up the ladder when they entered the helm.

“Are you alright?” The first man asked, with an accent she wasn’t familiar with. That was rare, she thought. She’d heard most of the accents the world had to offer in her time as an Aviator, which was all 19 years of her life. 

Oh yeah, he’d asked her a question.

“Nope.” She said with a firm nod. The nod hurt her neck.

“Get down from there then, get down.” They stepped forward, trying to pull her off the ladder. She tightened her grip.

“Ship’ll float away without me up there.”

“You don’t seem that heavy darling, I promise. You’re dehydrated, sunscorched. Let us help you.”

“I’m not heavy. The ship is too light. You gotta tighten the bags or else it’ll float away and all this’ll be for nothing.”

“If that were true, why has the ship not already spirited us into the skies? It will be fine, I promise.” The lead man spoke with the same tone one would use with belligerent drunks or the confused elderly. Hikoshi didn’t loosen her grip.

“Misty’s keeping us pinned down cause our nose is in the dirt. Wind’ll blow, knock her off balance, then she’ll get away and my friends will die. Gotta get up there.”

“Misty?” The man asked, looking down the hall for another crewmember. The second man, slightly shorter, spoke up.

“Misty is the steam engine, father.” He looked at Hikoshi, eyes sparkling. “Because she makes clouds, yes?”

Hikoshi lolled her head to the side, pointing at the boy with her pinky finger. “He gets it.” She tried to take another step. Failed. She pointed at the boy again. “Go up there. Pull all the strings you can see until the bags are small. Then she’ll stay.”

“I promise you, darling, he will do that. Just step off the ladder so I can help you while he does.”

“No.” She retorted. Quite clever, she thought. Left not even the slightest room for argument. “He can climb over me. I’ll get down once he does it.”

Frustration crept into the man’s words. “Why would we lie? If we were to rob you surely we would want the ship to remain. What would we gain from letting it float away? ”

“Dunno.” Hikoshi countered. She was damn good at this.

He grit his teeth. “Darling, you--”

The man’s son ignored him, stepping up to the ladder. Hikoshi gratefully stepped away, clearing the way for him to climb up the ladder. The father approached her, slipping her arm around his shoulders and turning towards the door.

“Thank you for listening to reason. Your ship will be safe while you rest.”

Something wasn’t right here. Mental gears ground, spitting broken bits of their cogs. She narrowed her eyes as he pulled her from the ship. “Wait. I wasn’t supposed to leave yet.”

She felt him smile even as he took more of her weight. She didn’t think she was doing much walking, judging by the panicked faces that started rushing towards him to help. She craned her neck around, ignoring the pain in her neck. The Stellar was settling onto the craggy landscape, reasserting its weight. 

“I need to see your Hunter.” She said as a woman took her other arm, lightening the man’s load. 

“You need to see our healer, darling.”

“No.” Her hand tightened on his shoulder, encouraging him to look at her. She locked eyes. “I don’t give a shit if I die. I need to talk to your Hunter.” She pulled an arm away from the woman on her right, fumbling beneath her Anjanath jacket. The texture against her burned skin hurt. She managed to find the pocket that held Souta’s Guild writ, pulling it out. “I’m a Guild member. I need to see your Hunter. Nothing else matters.”

He eyed the paper. It was Souta’s crude drawing, incapable of convincing even the most gullible toddler.

“I thought you were with the Guild from the moment we saw your ship, moreso when I saw your clothing, but seeing that paper I begin to doubt myself.” She flipped the paper, showing the elaborate seal Souta had inked. “Ah.”

“Told ya.”

“How about our Hunter sees you at the healer’s home, darling? Will that satisfy you?”

“Will it take longer?”

“He is on a Hunt.” He waved to someone in the growing crowd around her. “Go, send up a flare.”

“Which one, sir?”

“The red. Anything that someone is willing to kill themselves to speak of is an emergency.”

The person sprinted away, disappearing into the night. Hikoshi tucked the sheet back into her pocket, letting herself be supported by both arms again. “Thank you.”

“You are most welcome, darling. I only ask that you be less troublesome with the healer than you were with me, for your own sake.”

“You probably coulda just yanked me off there, y’know.”

“I’ve lived too long to make the mistake of challenging anyone wearing pelts to a test of strength. I prefer my arms unbroken and my skull intact, as a rule.”

“Not a Hunter. Kind of a Handler, but not really. Just got a lot a shit going on.”

They were leading her down steps, something that had happened at some point. The town was cut into the walls of the canyon, wooden stairs and rope bridges capping the holes in the rock. 

“I see. I will be curious to learn what has urged you to go to such great lengths to reach our small village, darling.” He really called her darling a lot. “If our Hunter sees fit to share the information, of course.”

“Not a secret. Big Dragon wrecking shit down south, ruining everything. Huge horde of Monsters coming this way, crawling over the mountains. Gonna tear every--”

His hand clapped over her mouth, but he was looking at the crowd. Whispers had begun already. He looked down at her kindly. “Perhaps this would be best to discuss with our Hunter in private, darling?”

“Why do you keep calling me darling?” She asked.

“I don’t want to be rude.”

“It’s weird. I have a girlfriend. She’s a Hunter that’s gonna die fighting the Dragon, though. But still, I don’t like dudes I think. And you sound old, which also sucks. Can’t see your face, but I’m, like, pretty sure.”

Laughs rippled through the crowd that was escorting her along the stairs.“I… see. We’re almost to the healer’s, da-- I mean, we’re almost there.”

They ushered her into a wooden cube that formed the entryway for a home cut in the rock. Where had they gotten all the wood for this, she wondered? This was a desert.

The crowd waited outside, whether out of fear or respect for the healer she wasn’t sure. She guessed it was fear, because he started cursing as soon as he was woken by the voice of the man helping her.

Still, he shuffled out, having her lay down on a padded table. It was the only piece of cloth she’d seen outside the clothes in this village, and it felt heavenly on her back. He began to examine her, listening to the words of the man that had helped her here. She added information every now and then, her own tidbits that she thought were relevant. A part of her doubted many of them were.

He addressed her directly for the first time some few minutes later, applying a salve to her forearm. “Why, darling, have you not passed out?”

“Got shit to do.”

“Don’t call her darling, by the way. She thought I was flirting with her.”

The healer snorted. “This village has been isolated for too long. I told you that your habits were strange. A shame that they’re infecting even me.” He switched to her other arm. “ Ma’am , you have severely sunscorched hands, covering what appears to be frostbite. You are teetering on the edge of dehydration delirium while coming from a ship obviously well-stocked with water. You wear the clothes of a Hunter but have not consumed a drop of potion, and are not reacting to the salve with the speed expected of a Hunter. If I take your clothes off what more will I find to baffle me?”

“Bite marks.” She answered honestly. He immediately began peeling away her jacket, readying a knife to cut through her shirt. She slapped his hand away, nicking her hand on the scalpel. “Joking. Girlfriend bite marks, not animal. God, that knife is sharp.”

He set it down, grabbing a bandage from a tray near her knee. The blood running down her arm swirled in interesting patterns where it met the green paste on her arms, distracting her for a time. He applied the bandage, wrapping it around her palm, then wiped away the blood-tainted salve. She frowned, disappointed. It had looked interesting. 

“Do you have anything to say that might contradict my diagnosis of what ails you? The dangers of the wild are many, and I do not want to harm more than I help. And I believe you are more lucid than you behave, so do not bother with frivolities.”

“Damn. What gave me away?”

“The delirious rarely have a sense of humor.”

“Ugh, figures. In short, no. Sounds to me like you got it in one, doc. Frostbite, no water, and sunscorch, ‘cause the best things come in threes.” She twisted her neck to the man who had brought her, who she assumed to be some kind of authority figure. “How long till the Hunter gets here?”

“He will rush home as soon as he sees the flare. We will fire them intermittently until he answers with his own.”

“Neat system. Sounds expensive.”

“It is.”

“Sorry ‘bout that.”

“I’m sure your tale is worth it.”

“Want it now?”

“I am a patient man. I will await Sahbon, so you may only speak it once.”

“Cool.”

They waited in silence, the healer working his way across her various wounds. He pulled off her boots and jacket, then her shirt, offering a thin wrap around her chest for modesty. At least the wrap covered most of the bite marks, even if he definitely saw them. Her toes, it turned out, had also been affected by frostbite, alongside short scabbed over cuts that circled her body in seemingly random fashion. She didn’t even know where those came from, particularly because they were so thin. 

Thudding boots echoed through the canyon, followed by shouts for the crowd to clear. She heard the shuffle as dozens of people moved aside, then the door swung open. A Hunter, adorned in tan carapace littered with curling spikes, entered the room.

“What’s the emergency?” He immediately demanded of the man, who she by now assumed to be the leader of the town. “I thought the village was under attack!”

Hikoshi waved from the table, drawing his attention. “Hi, emergency here. Glad you could make it.”

His eyes flicked to the Anjanath clothing scattered by the floor, then to her wounds. “A Handler?”

“Kinda.”

“Kind of? Do you have--” 

She tapped the Guild writ that she’d put on the table before they’d undressed her, good side up this time. He picked it up, inspecting it. An eyebrow raised when he flipped it over, but he seemed to accept it. He gestured for her to begin.

“Y’know how there’s been some Monsters that aren’t supposed to be here?”

“That’s a bit of an understatement of the situation, but yes, I’m familiar.”

“Well, I’m the pilot of the ship that was sent to check it out. Had to leave my Hunters behind-- one of which was my girlfriend by the way, which really makes it suck-- and sprint back here.” She cleared her throat, trying to recall the way that Souta had summarized the situation. “A Great Rajang and Dragon are in a territorial dispute, and likely have been for some months. Their battle has been tracking north, displacing an unknown number of Monsters from their holdings in the process. The battle appears nowhere near its conclusion and will likely worsen over the coming months. The only two Hunters on-site have less than three years of combined experience.”

The Hunter, who was named Sahbon, if she recalled correctly, unbuckled his helmet to run a hand through sweaty hair. She watched him work his way through his thoughts, organizing them. He began with a simple question.

“Did you say Great Rajang?”

“That’s what he told me. I don’t know why.”

He sighed. “You’re not a real handler, are you?”

“Field promotions are real promotions.”

“We’ll see how you stack up on your evaluation. Anyway, the Great Rajang. Did you see it?”

“Yeah.”

“Describe it.”

“Tall, gray haired, like an old man. Horns like a ram. Hit stuff with these big lightning bolts from above. Souta seemed to think it was a big deal that the lightning was white, if that matters.”

“How tall was it?”

“Dunno, it was far away. Forty feet or so?”

Sahbon swore quietly. “A Great Rajang. God help us all. And the Dragon?”

“Bigger. All black, had smoke coming out its mouth. Shot these spikes from its chest to stab things. Big long neck, real bony wings. Never saw it fly, but it looked like it could.”

“A dispute between a Dragon and a Great Rajang, dealt with by two inexperienced Hunters. Okay, that’s an emergency. How far away?”

“Five hundred miles from here when I left. Looked like the battle was heading North though, which was a few days ago, so they might be closer now.”

“Shit.” He paced in place, gnawing on a fingernail. His armor clacked loudly, bones and carapace rubbing against each other. It wouldn’t do that if Sumi had made it, she bet. “What did your Hunters propose?”

“They’re gonna try and kill anything they can find that’s heading north, help you guys out. They think the Great Rajang’s gonna lose, but they don’t want that to happen, so they’re planning to help it if things look too dicey. They think the Dragon just happened to run into the Rajang, which started defending its territory. The Dragon seemed to be attacking anything it could.”

“A rampage, then.”

“Sounds like what they called it. I’ll know for sure tomorrow, when my head’s in shape.”

“If they felt it worth intervening, it has to be. They wouldn’t throw their lives away to take sides in a fight over territory, which means they’re worried the Dragon is coming for human settlements once it deals with the Great Rajang.”

“You sound as happy about this as they did. Glad you’re getting the point.” Her head cocked, latching on to his choice of words. “Throwing their lives away?” She turned to the village leader. “Told you she was gonna die.”

“You don’t know that.” He responded reflexively. 

She pointed at the Hunter. “Sahbon! Is my girlfriend going to die?” 

He stopped pacing, a pained expression on his face. His eyes flicked up and behind her, where the healer was standing. She watched him visibly force the frown away. “Maybe. Maybe, that’s all I can say. It’s risky just to be there, but they couldn’t kill a Dragon. If the Rajang manages to hold out long enough they may still be alive when the Guild arrives. If they stay reasonable, act within their capabilities, and don’t do anything rash? Yes, they could very well survive.”

Hikoshi moaned, throwing an arm over her eyes. “They’re deeeeaaaaad.”

The old man chuckled, clapping a reassuring hand on her bare shoulder. His hands were rough and calloused. “You don’t seem to have much of an opinion of your partner, darling.”

She dropped her arm a little bit, staring daggers at him. “It turns out all the hot stuff is also the gets-her-dead stuff, too. Really lucked out on that, didn’t I?”

“So it seems. I haven’t yet met her, but your relationship seems strong. I doubt she will be eager to throw her life away when she knows you are waiting for her to return.”

“Waiting?” Hikoshi spat, disgusted by the word. “I’m going back with the Guild. She’s gonna see my ship at the head of a whole fleet full of Hunters, ready to kick that thing’s ass.”

“With all due respect, ma’am,” The healer began. She cut him off with mocking baby talk, miming her hand like a toddler babbling.

“Bleh bleh blah, I think you should stay and rest, you’re too wounded.” She dropped her hand, trying to sit up. He pushed her down. “That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”

“The gist of it, yes, if not the exact wording.”

“Well let me tell you that there’s no way in hell I’m going to sit here and suck on my thumb. Besides, Sahbon needs my ship to reach the nearest Guild center as fast as possible and he doesn’t know how to fly it.”

Sahbon perked up. “I’ve actually spent some time on--”

“And. He. Doesn’t. Know. How. To. Fly. It.”

The village leader’s stare at Sahbon was withering. He shrunk, holding his hands up. “I mean, it looked strange. It had something coming off of it that I’ve never seen before.”

Hikoshi seized on that. “Yeah! I’m the only one that knows how to keep Misty alive!”

The village leader pinched the bridge of his nose. She really should learn his name. “Misty being the steam engine, I presume?”

“What’s your name?” Hikoshi asked. 

“I-- oh, alright. My name is Digasi. Sahbon, is it true that you would be unable to sail the ship yourself?”

“Don’t know a thing about steam engines, boss.”

“That’s not quite an answer.”

“And you’re not quite strong enough to stop me from abducting this chick so she can go rescue her girl.”

Digasi threw his head back, groaning. “It is too late in the night to deal with Guild members. I will see you in the morning, darl-- I mean, ma’am. Hopefully you will be more coherent by then.”

“Only if the doc keeps the beer away from me.”

“He will. And that’s an order, understand Loshi?”

“Perfectly, sir.”

“Alright, glad that’s all settled, you guys.” Hikoshi smiled, clapping her hands together. She missed, slapping her arm. It was incredibly painful. “If you don’t mind me, I’m going to pass out.”

Chapter Text

Sumi watched the Stellar drift away, propeller churning through the morning skies. She didn’t know if Hikoshi would make it to the Guild. Even if she did, she didn’t know if she and Souta would be alive to see her return.

She shook that thought from her head. She had made a promise to her mother to come back alive, and she’d extracted a similar promise from Hikoshi. They would both put everything they had into surviving, and that meant anything capable of killing them would have done so no matter what they did. It was in luck’s hands now. 

She walked back to the firepit that marked their new home’s center, mind bubbling with half-formed worries, thoughts, and plans. The Great Rajang and the Dragon had likely been fighting for weeks now, if the extent of the damaged terrain further south was anything to go by. Hikoshi had taken the ship to scout it out while Sumi had worked the previous day, finding a trail of battle scarred lands that carried away into the endless horizon. Perhaps the very first wave of invasive species had been a result of the Dragon’s actions alone, considering the time scales involved, but it had been the conflict that had started the true surge of fleeing beasts.

Nearly each night they saw the Great Rajang’s lightning crackling across the land, met and often overwhelmed by black fog. She didn’t know why they only fought at night, but it was consistent. They’d yet to see a single sign of either Monster in the daylight. There had been one night without any sign of conflict at all, which had put them on edge for the following day, but the light show had brightened the night on cue. 

The momentary fear of the Great Rajang’s defeat forced them to confront a greater issue. They could track the Monsters, even approach them, but what use was it? They were both certain, convinced by the primal fear coiled in their guts, that their weapons were useless in a fight against a Dragon. 

Dragons had been killed before. They had been buried under weight of bodies, starved and exhausted until they collapsed, then mercilessly beaten by hundreds of Hunters for hours until the internal bleeding had been too much. One, according to Souta, had been lured under a mountain overhang and had it collapsed on top of them. The excavated corpse revealed that the Dragon had died from a lack of air, though, not the mountain that had fallen on it. They’d decided that their goal was to help the Great Rajang, even save it if necessary, but how?

Ultimately, they didn’t know. There was no way to know, in fact. What would or wouldn’t work was purely hypothetical until tested, and that meant they had to try everything they could. They debated on the effectiveness of rockslides, felled trees, drowning, even collapsing pits, but nothing would be certain until it was too late to change. What’s more, all of those methods required knowledge of where the fight would occur well ahead of time, another impossibility. They continued to work their way through their options regardless.

“The Great Rajang’s lightning is white, not yellow, like a normal Rajang. Do you think it behaves more like natural lightning than a normal Monster’s electricity?”

“It would make sense, I guess.” Sumi was digging a new forge pit while Souta kept watch, waiting for something to stray close enough to Hunt. “The lightning comes from above, too, which seems more natural. No way to be sure. Why’re you wondering?”

“I was thinking that drowning might not be the best way to help. Maybe just getting it into water will be enough. If the Great Rajang’s lightning behaves like a normal bolt then it might fry the thing then and there.”

She tossed dirt over her shoulder, giving the idea consideration. “Makes sense to me. I don’t know how we would have held it underwater for long enough to drown, anyway.”

“One of the better ideas, I’d say. You thought of any way for us to lure the Dragon without using ourselves as bait?”

“I’ve got plenty of ideas, but no idea if any of them are good. We don’t even know if the Dragon would care enough to chase us, much less a decoy. We could make a fake straw Monster and hope it attacked it, or get a big bag of bloody meat and drag it around, or we could hide somewhere and try to imitate the sound of something being hurt. All of them might work, all of them might not. We just don’t know enough.”

“I think the first thing we’re going to have to do is learn more about the Dragon.”

Sumi poked her head up from the pit she was digging. It had been deep enough an hour ago, but she liked having a project to distract her. “And how would we do that? One stray bolt from the Great Rajang and we’re fried, not to mention whatever the hell the black smoke does to us. It kills grass as soon as it touches it, and I doubt we’re much hardier in comparison.”

“Waiting until the Great Rajang is at its weakest and then running in blind is even riskier than that.”

“I guess you’re right.” She hit an irritatingly placed stone with her shovel, tossing the tool aside in favor of her sword. She began slicing the rock into more manageable pieces. “But I’d rather be dead later than dead now.”

“We don’t have to get close. I’ve got my spyglass. A mile away or so away should be safe, or at least give us time to run if the battle starts heading our way.”

“Don’t have much choice, do we?” She wiped the sweat from her brow, hopping out of the pit. “What’s the best-case scenario for Guild reinforcements reaching us?”

Souta shaded his eyes as he scanned the fields, working through the math. “A week for Hikoshi to get to the nearest village, then we’ll say another week for her to get to the closest Guild center. I don’t know how long it will take to recall unnecessary Hunters, or if there even will be any Hunters to spare in the area, not to mention commandeering ships. If the south is under the kind of assault we’re guessing it is then they'll have to pull from the Northern frontier, which adds travel time. Call it three or four weeks just to gather everyone up, a few more to plan and supply, then another week to get back? I don’t know. Six to eight weeks, I’d guess.”

“And that’s the optimistic angle, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. They may send a smaller force first, whoever they have on hand at the nearest Guild center, but it probably won’t be much.”

“Three or four weeks until the B Team arrives, if they send one at all, and double that for a force actually capable of helping. Wonderful.”

“I’ll take the B Team at this point. I don’t care if they’re the C or D team, to be honest. I was half-tempted to take Hikoshi up on training her as a Hunter as it was.”

“So we’ve got a month or two where we’re the only people in a few hundred miles. We can’t do anything to the Dragon directly, not as we are right now, so what does that leave us doing?”

“A few days ago I would have said ‘killing Monsters to help the Guild’, but considering how many we’ve seen already…”

The volume that they saw scattering each day had quickly shaken the thought that their culling of the fleeing Monsters would make a difference in the Guild’s needs across the mountains. An ecological collapse like this one wasn’t limited to the immediate area around the dueling Monsters; it had a cascading effect, each Monster forced to flee to already occupied territory where they incited further conflict. It was a domino effect, and if any records of how far it could spread existed they hadn’t been included in Souta’s small field library. 

“There’s just too many unknowns. How can we plan for the unexpected?” 

Souta’s armor rustled as he shrugged. “All we can do is make sure we’re as ready as we can be.”

“For a fight we aren’t sure will happen, in a place we can’t predict, between creatures we can’t even begin to understand?”

“Don’t know about you, Sumi,” Souta said, drawing his bow and walking forward. “But I want to go into the grave looking as jacked as possible.” He broke into a jog, heading for something Sumi had missed. 

She followed him. “So you want to just fight? Spend two months Hunting, being Hunted, following a Dragon that could kill us with a flick of its wings?”

He pulled his facemask down, exposing to her a familiar and feral grin. The kind he had before he’d led her into the jungle for the first time all those months ago. The kind he’d worn before leaping out of a tree, trying to reach an airship where a Wyvern was sleeping. The same smile he wore every time he was about to do something stupid, something only a Hunter could do. He met her eyes and asked her a simple question.

“Don’t you?” 

She laughed, long and hard. Their pace accelerated, heading for a blob in the fields that was gaining distinction with every step. She laughed for a good, long while, the kind of laugh that can only be brought about by someone who knows you so well the two of you might as well be the same person. She forced her chuckles down, lowering her head and slipping on her helmet. She gave her answer by picking up the pace, pulling ahead of Souta, arms pumping as she blitzed through the grass.

The Monster approaching them roared, furious and deep. She’d never seen one before, never read its description or heard a story about it. It was massive and intimidating, bulky muscle bound in a body as lethal as it was alien. 

She pulled her shield tight and drew her sword, gait devolving into an open sprint. The Monster roared again, three-foot fangs exposed by its gaping mouth. 

Souta responded with a pair of bolts, each scraping along the roof of the thing’s mouth. Sumi lept forward, bringing her shield in front of herself. It swatted her out of the air, sending her tumbling dozens of feet to the side. 

She came out of the roll on all fours, bearing a feral grin.

The creature pulled a number of surprises before it was finally dead. The spines around its neck, which she’d originally categorized as something akin to a canine’s spike collar, revealed themselves to be impressively maneuverable. She’d been standing on its back when they’d suddenly risen to face her, seeking to run her through. Its oversized fangs, which she’d decided early-on to be meant for preventing prey from escaping its grasp, turned out to be hollow when they had snapped against her shield. A fluid had burst forth, steaming against her armor and burning where it managed to reach her skin. And its bulky head, unable to do much more than look straight ahead, proved no disadvantage at all. It seemed aware of their presence no matter where they approached it from, always reacting before it could have possibly seen them. Even examining the corpse, searching for hidden eyes, she found nothing.

Its skin had proved too weak in the end, easily pierced by Souta’s arrow or slashed by her sword. It had bled out long before a killing blow was landed, collapsing in a heap. The only exception was its fur, which, where it was thickest, resisted all efforts to cut it. 

The asymmetrical thickness of its fur was puzzling, for that matter. It seemed the Monster’s primary defense came from the golden curls, so they couldn’t explain why it wouldn’t be covered in the stuff. It was only when Souta plucked a few strands of the sparser fur and examined it closely that they realized its ends and edges were singed, thinned by fire. It seemed the Monster had encountered a very personal reason to be fleeing south. 

She cut away as much of the fur as she could, the thicker bundles too much for her sword to easily slice through. She planned to use them as extra reinforcements in their armor’s joints, where weak steel and chainmail covered the gaps of hardier leather and carapace. Souta also spooned what he could of its venom into a small bottle, planning to use it for his arrows later. 

They left the rest of the body for the scavengers. Sumi even tore open a small flap of skin, so the smaller creatures would have a chance of enjoying the feast. It was partially altruistic, but mostly because she didn’t want a hill of a corpse a rotting few hundred yards away from camp. She brought the fur and venom back to camp to try and work it into their gear.

Hikoshi

She woke the day after arriving in the small village to a body that was slightly less eviscerated, as evaluated by a mind that was slightly less than rational. She shivered on the mat, feverish chills forcing her teeth to chatter every few minutes. The air against her was warm, nearly hot, rolling in from the desert, but it didn’t seem to matter. 

“The problem child awakes.” 

HIkoshi turned her head to find the village doctor stirring a pot that hung over a simmering fire. She groaned. “How long was I out?”

“Less than a day, I assure you. You have not missed any deadlines, either; Sahbon is still preparing for departure, and will likely be doing so for several hours yet. He came by earlier in the morning to inform you as much.”

“Great. How long until my body isn’t doesn’t feel like the sun used it as a punching bag?”

“Work in the desert has brought myself a regrettable wealth of experience on the condition of sunscorch, but precious little in its complications when occurring alongside frostbite, so I cannot say with any degree of confidence. How did you manage that, by the way?”

“Crossing the mountains. Picked a bad valley to go through, took all night and then some because of the wind. Too stubborn to give up, so I ended up frozen before I made it to the desert. Passed out in the sand, then here we are.” She held up her hands for emphasis, finding yellow boils swelling along the back of her palms. She grimaced, reaching to pick at them.

“Do not touch that.” The doctor snapped. Hikoshi lowered her hand like a child caught in the sweets jar. “You are covered in blisters, as expected. I understand that I cannot keep you here, on account of our mutual Hunter acquaintance and your own stubbornness, but I will insist that you properly take care of your wounds in my absence.” 

He set his food to the side, gathering medicinals from a cabinet. He brought them over to her table, naming them as he laid them out and explaining how much, where, and how often each should be applied. Hikoshi’s head was still clouded by an irritating buzz, so she asked him to write it down, which he did. His handwriting was just legible enough for her to not bother rewriting it herself.

“And why, exactly, can’t I pop these? They’re massive, ugly, and everywhere.”

“Because that bubble of skin is filled with every bit of toxin and disease your body wishes to force out of itself, and popping it would only spread the offensive grime over the rest of your skin. You might as well shove the open wound into dung if you feel popping them becomes necessary.”

“What if I don’t have any dung handy?”

“You’re going to be one of those patients, aren’t you?”

Hikoshi gave a hacking laugh, leaning back onto the padded table. She felt his hands running along her legs, inspecting her frostbitten extremities. She wiggled her toes demonstratively, just to prove they didn’t need to be amputated. 

“Will I need a crutch?” She asked, the idea just now occurring to her. “I hate crutches.”

“If I had my way you wouldn’t be standing for the next week, ma’am. If you want to spend the rest of your life walking without a cane then you’ll be sure to walk with crutches for the next month.”

“That’s the problem with you doctors. You’re always so damn right about everything.”

He looked up from his ministrations to offer her a gentle smile. “I try to make a habit of it.”

“Where’d you learn? I can’t imagine this village has a school for you to have trained.”

“I trained at the Lord’s Academy of Medicala, in Yunchuan. As for learning?” He pricked something on her foot that made her wince. “I did that in the field, after graduation. There aren’t enough pieces of paper in all the world to catalog everything a Monster is capable of doing to the human body.”

“Hate to break it to you, but I sort of did this to myself.”

“An even more exhaustingly comprehensive subject, then. I often find myself wondering how many centuries it will take before medicine is as understood as the physical sciences.”

“Hopefully they’ll get to the part that gets rid of crutches before I kick the bucket.”

“I somehow doubt that, ma’am.” He was pressing a soft clay between her toes, to keep their purpling surfaces separated. According to his instructions she would have to keep all of them apart until they were healed, applying a series of salves multiple times per day. “Despite being a frequent disappointment for my patients, the simple measures are often the most effective ones in medicine. At the very least, they’re a prerequisite for any further healing.”

“You sound more like a researcher than a small town doc, doc. I’ve got a question.”

“Oh? Interested in learning?”

“Not about medicine. I was wondering if you’d ever researched anything about steam engines.”

He shook his head, wiping the boils on her arm with a damp rag. “I’m afraid not. I kept my nose buried in medical textbooks, not engineering tomes. I do know that they’re capable of doing terrifying things to the human form, as evidenced by the patients I have seen coming from the mines and presses.”

Hikoshi shuddered. “I’ve seen that once. Pipe burst in an enclosed space, turned itself into a bomb. Wooden shrapnel and scalding steam hit her all at once, threw her to the deck. She tried to lift her arm up and the skin stayed with the wood. I could see the muscles twitching while she moved.”

He nodded understandingly. “A terrible way to die.”

“Oh, no, she was fine a few minutes later.”

“I see. One of your Hunters, then?”

“My girlfriend, yeah. So you think she would have died if she hadn’t been a Hunter?”

“A burn severe enough to melt flesh would most certainly be lethal, either from immediate trauma or the subsequent infection. How quickly did she drink her potion?”

“Not long. Maybe a minute or less. I had to kick her in the mouth to wake her up, though.”

“That is… not part of the usual treatment regimen.”

“Maybe I could teach you a thing or two.”

“I think I’ll wait for your paper to be reviewed before accepting your advice.”

“Might come in handy if you ever have to treat a Hunter. I imagine that doesn’t happen all that often, though.”

“On the contrary, working for the Guild was one of the best opportunities any doctor can be afforded. They may be able to heal most common injuries with potion and a few day’s rest, but those that are severe enough to require our involvement tend to be… unique, to say the least.”

“I didn’t know there was anything that potions couldn’t heal.”

“A Hunter’s brew can do many things, but it is not a miracle. It can heal lacerations and stimulate recovery from blood loss, help set bones and seal cracks in skulls, but it has limits. A Hunter incapable of ingesting it for any reason will not benefit, of course, and it cannot do much in the way of repairing damage to organs or large groups of muscles.”

“Sounds like you saw some serious shit working with the Guild.”

“Indeed.”

She lifted her head to stare him down. “Oh, come on. You can’t dangle stories like that in front of my face and not cough ‘em up.”

He chuckled. “Few patients wish to hear about all the ways their life could go worse in the future.”

“Spill it, doc.”

He held up her hand to unwind the bandage around her self-inflicted scalpel wound, thinking it over. He finally selected a story when he was wrapping the fresh bandage back on. “When I was in my second year of training I had a case that I had to undertake on my own due to the volume of patients that required treatment. To this day I feel she was improperly prioritized, and should have been dealt with by a fully trained doctor, but I did my best.”

“She had taken a blow from some kind of tusk to the lower left abdomen, glancing off her hip. The attack that had shattered her armor to reach her, and fragments of the broken carapace had scattered themselves throughout her abdominal cavity and musculature. It had taken hours of careful prying to remove everything I could find, all while she held open the wound for me. A more skilled surgeon could have done it far quicker. It was only by virtue of a constant supply of potion that she did not bleed out.”

Hikoshi looked down at her collection of skin-deep injuries. “Damn, I’m really not shit, am I?”

“Few are, when put next to a Hunter.”

“How about Handlers?” Hikoshi wondered, gesturing to her Anjananath coat. “They eventually end up like Hunters?”

“Not that I’m aware of, but there were few Handlers that I encountered at the Guild clinic. I’m not sure if that was because they tended to find themselves injured less or because they failed to survive their wounds long enough to reach us. Either way, what few I did operate on showed little of the resilience Hunters displayed.”

“Damn. I was looking forward to holding open my own guts so you can operate on me someday.”

She expected him to laugh, but his expression only grew sterner. “Let us hope the need never arises.” 

Hikoshi nodded, doing her best to match his solemn attitude. 

Sumi 

It had been three days since Hikoshi had left, and she was facing down her fifth Monster. She and Souta took turns dealing with whatever came close enough to pursue, which meant that there had been ten total in three days. It was a testament to the hunger of the local wildlife that none of the corpses still littered the area. 

There would be one more to feed the desperate refugees tonight. This one was one she and Souta had to take together, on account of its wings. It would underestimate her at first, but as soon as she gained the upper hand it would flee. Souta’s job was to make sure it wouldn’t have the option. 

It walked with the gait of a great ape, front legs pushing off with thick knuckles, but that was the only similarity to any kind of primate it possessed. Thick leathery wings connected its front legs to its rear, loosely folded and twisting as it moved. Its head was bricklike, jaws extending to the very edges of its skull. Its underbite exposed jagged and dull teeth, implying both a predator’s diet and tremendous bite force. The supposition was supported by the cables of muscle that ran down its short neck, bulging every time the creature took a hit. A flap of skin was pressed against its body in the center of its hindquarters, which she assumed would unfold itself in flight to help its control.

She’d already seen the creature take off once, using a running leap to get itself airborne, but Souta had distracted it with well-led shots that had drawn it back. The Monster was enraged for now, willing to fight, but she had to make sure its wings were torn before it could decide to leave again. 

“Terror Bat!” Sumi shouted as she ducked a hammer fist, countering its attack with a slam of her shield into its torso. She felt something crack. The creature threw itself backward, trying to maintain its range advantage.

“Sounds like a bad book name, Sumi. You got better than that!”

They were also trying to name it while they fought it, and the best suggestion by the end of the fight would be final. They’d come up with that rule after the fourth Monster that had no name had led to an hours long debate. It was distracting during the fight, but so was arguing until the moon rose. 

The Monster slammed its fists down in succession, working its way toward her. It looked like a toddler throwing a tantrum, if a toddler’s punches could shatter stone.

“It’s pretty accurate, though!” Sumi argued, jogging backward. “What’d it be in an old language?” 

Souta had the Book of the Dead with him, something that she was still convinced he’d named himself. She knew he was flipping through the pages, finding different words that could be smashed together to find the thing’s name. 

“I mean, it’s not bad!” He reluctantly admitted. “Osomori sounds like a proper Monster name to me.”

“Then I’m gonna focus on killing this Osomori!” 

She ducked forward, feeling its arm scrape across her back. The wild swing pulled its wing skin taut above her, veins highlighted by the noonday sun. She flipped her sword upward, tugging it along the skin. It took a moment before the blade’s serrations caught, but when they did the damage was catastrophic. 

The sword buried itself to the hilt in a flash, tearing through the thin as easily as it did air. She wrenched it around, finding the thick vein that the sun had revealed to her. 

Viscous blood gushed out, covering her upper body. The creature shrieked in agony, pulling itself off her blade by leaping upward. She rolled to the side, not wanting to be underneath it when it landed.

The Osomori tried to fly, but the profusely bleeding wound and perforated wing quickly turned its flapping into a tumble. It hit the ground in a cloud of dust.

She charged in, aiming for a killing strike. The thing’s skull had already proved too tough to cut on a dozen occasions, but she doubted the skin of its neck had the same durability. It was injured, delirious, and panicking from blood loss, which meant she should be able to--

The Osomori stood, wounded wing clamped in its mouth. Its flat tongue was slipped through the wound, staunching the flow of arterial blood. Sumi didn’t have time to react before its remaining fist caught her in an uppercut of impossible proportions. 

The blue sky turned white, along with everything else, then she hit the ground. Sumi scrambled to her feet, feeling at her chest while she tried to draw a breath. There was no gaping cavity, and her armor hadn’t been broken, but she couldn’t inhale. At least she was getting more used to the sensation of having the wind knocked out of her. 

The thing was limping towards her in a three-legged run, head lowered to use as a ram. She saw Souta popping up from his grass-covered hiding spot, drawing his bow, and shot him her rudest gesture. Being unable to breathe didn’t mean she was out of the fight. She set her feet in the dirt, holding her shield up. She managed a quick gasp just before impact.

It hit her at an angle, shoving her legs into the dirt up to the knee. The shock shot down her shield, cratering the earth around her. She felt two distinct snaps, one in her shield, one just ahead of it.

The Osomori dropped like a sack of rice. Sumi was pushed backward under its falling weight, ripping her boots from their prison. The dead beast landed across her lower half, pinning her to the ground. 

She tried to extract herself, shoving against its shoulder, but it was useless. She tugged at its head, trying a different angle, and found the front half of its face peeling off in her hands.

Sumi’s two dialects, village girl and Hunter, mixed in an interesting combination. She squealed a litany of high-pitched curses, any one of which would have shocked her parents, but with the tone of a frightened school girl. 

Souta was jogging up to help her escape from beneath the weight, at least until he heard her shouting and saw the reason why. Then he doubled over into a fit of laughter, barely able to stand. 

Sumi completed the peel, removing the Monster’s entire face and half its skull. She tossed it aside, as shocked as she was fascinated. She didn’t think she’d ever seen a Monster’s brain, much less the backsides of its eyes still dangling from nerves and muscles. 

She managed to pull herself free without Souta’s assistance, rolling in the grass to get the worst of the blood off her armor. She wasn’t concerned about style or stains, but she wasn’t a fan of a strange Monster’s blood rubbing against her skin until she could disrobe. 

The Osomori’s skull had shattered from the impact, the point of her Tigrex shield driving the top of its skull into its brain. A circular gap was evenly split between both fragments. She could still see the shard wedged there, in fact, as obviously lethal a wound as she’d ever seen. She ignored Souta’s wheezing laughter, which was broken up by bad attempts to imitate her cursing, and bent down to inspect the thing’s brain.

It was objectively sizable, larger than a human brain by a decent margin, but still seemed small when compared to the volume of the rest of the skull. She tugged a gauntlet off and felt at the skull that had remained attached to the body. There were a number of slight ridges across the surface, reminiscent of a bone that had been repeatedly broken and healed. Maybe the Osomori had been a lot smarter before it had started headbutting everything to death. 

Sumi flipped the front part of its skull over, to compare. The meat of its face slid off, unceremoniously flopping in the dirt. She was left with a wide skull, complete with eye and mouth holes. It was the most spherical animal skull she’d ever seen, fit to use for a children’s game. 

Sumi felt her shield jiggle on her arm as she moved, something that definitely shouldn’t happen. She raised it up, running a careful eye over it. 

The wooden backing had snapped in two, only held together by the strap’s tacks and the Tigrex plate atop it. She’d known she needed to replace it soon, but she hadn’t realized how close it was to breaking. It was soberingly fortunate that the shield had broken with the same impact that had killed her opponent. 

She shook her arm, seeing how well the shattered piece stuck together. It didn’t, falling off her arm in three distinct chunks. Even the metal that had held the Tigrex plate in place had cracked, useless. She huffed out a long-suffering sigh, sliding the strap off her arm. This was a problem that needed to be addressed immediately. 

She picked up the front half of the skull, considering. It was over a foot wide, bleach white under all the blood and matted fur. The obvious problem was the eye and mouth holes, too large a gap to ignore. She tugged at the skull that was still attached to the neck, feeling it wobble. She bet she could do this.

Sumi spent the next hour prying the Osomori’s skull loose, eventually assisted by Souta. It was an aggravating process, but they managed to rip it free after sawing through several bundles of connective tissue. She compared the two skull pieces, grateful to find that they fit together like stacked bowls. 

She held up the combined skulls to Souta, face layered in front of the back piece. The front extended slightly, leaving a shadow over the rear skull piece that made it seem the mouth was still empty aside from teeth. 

“What do you think?” She asked, placing it over her right arm. 

“I think you look like a psychopath.”

“In a good way?” 

“I don’t think there’s a good way to make armor out of the bodies of the things we kill. Pretty sure every Hunter looks a little bit crazy. How well will it work?” 

She tried different positions on her arm, eventually settling on having the skull upside down. “The hole that killed it makes a convenient slot for my arm. I’ll have to put some bracing on the sides, or else any twisting could break my arm, but that shouldn’t be too hard. The only question is whether or not it’s better than my Tigrex plate.”

“You don’t have to throw your old one away, you know. You can use this one for now, and if it doesn’t work out you can go back to your old shield. Where is that, by the way?” She hooked a thumb at the remnants of her broken gear. Souta winced sympathetically. “Damn. Is the Tigrex plate still salvageable?”

“Should be, but I don’t know what I’d use as a base for it. I’m worse off on smithing supplies than I was on the Stellar, since we let her keep all the coal.”

“You’ll figure something out.”

There was no fight that night. The skyline was quiet, decorated by shadowed forests and stars instead of black clouds and lightning. It was strange how the peaceful nights left her more anxious than the ones with conflict. 

She was pacing in front of the stockade, keeping an eye out in the night. There was little threat of a Monster reaching the camp now, their defenses too robust. She and Souta had felled every tree in the closest few miles to make the spikes, turning the thin strip of land between the two lakes into a fortress. Sharpened logs twice her height angled towards the south, arrayed in an irregular grid thirty yards thick. They were low enough to the ground that a Monster had long since been seen by her and Souta before it could decide to turn around.

She’d forgone a torch to save her night vision, letting her black armor blend with the darkness. The white skull shield ruined the effect slightly. Maybe she’d paint it. 

She hated not knowing whether the Great Rajang was dead or resting, hated not knowing if the Dragon was coming her way. Its scales had seemed darker than the space between the stars when she’d seen it last. If it flew over the camp at night, heading north to terrorize human settlements, would she even know?

She was bouncing on her heels as she walked now, nerves twisted into knots. She couldn’t just sit there the entire night, keeping watch. Souta would be fine. She had to go out.

Sumi strode out into the plains, breaking into what she had once called a Hunter’s jog. It was faster than she used to be able to sprint, but still infuriatingly slow to someone who was used to exploring from the deck of an airship. She’d let herself get spoiled awfully quick.

Some animals attacked her while she roved, trying their luck on a seemingly distracted prey. The constant flow of Monsters passing through the area had left more traditional predators desperate. Most she could easily sidestep, continuing on her way, but one tiger-like feline got the jump on her in impressively intelligent fashion. It leapt from a low ditch she hadn’t known was there, apparating from grass that had risen to smooth away the divot. She’d blocked its bite with her left arm, then hit it across the jaw with her right. It dropped bonelessly, unconscious. She was pretty sure it wasn’t dead, because she hadn’t felt anything break. She was about to continue on her way before her conscience got the better of her. 

Sumi knelt down next to the tiger-thing, taking only a moment to appreciate its striped mane. She gave it a few flicks on the nose, trying to wake it. It wouldn’t be fair to this thing to only be awoken when scavengers began tearing at its flesh. She decided to call it a Maned Tiger, which was far from an original name, but descriptive enough. 

The tiger’s eyes fluttered open, dilated unevenly. It blinked a few times, seemingly unable to comprehend the black leather automaton in front of it, then scrambled to its feet. A low growl rolled out of its throat, reverberating in Sumi’s chest. Its lips peeled away to display a collection of razor teeth.

“Go on, shoo.” Sumi urged, waving at the thing. It took a step forward. Sumi cocked her fist back, tapping at her face demonstratively. “You really want to try that again, big buddy? Didn’t go well last time.”

It leapt at her, mouth open. She sighed, moving her closed fist so the tiger’s leap shoved it halfway down its own throat. With her other hand she grabbed a fistful of its mane, pulling it up in the air. She wasn’t tall enough to dangle it off the ground, but it couldn’t escape from her with only its back legs pedaling in the grass.

“Understand now?” She asked it, turning its head to look her in the eye. Its snarl sputtered out, front legs bracing against her chest in an effort to shove itself away. She sighed, tossing it. The tiger scattered immediately, camouflaged coat disappearing into the grass. 

Sumi continued her impromptu scouting exercise, trying to think of where an injured Rajang might want to recuperate. She could jog for miles and still make it back before sunrise, which left her with quite a few options. There was the forest the Stellar had docked at on the final night, but that didn’t offer many secluded spaces. Some of the nearby forest groves were promising, large enough to hide a Monster within, but she imagined the Dragon would have thought to search for those after winning a battle, which meant the Great Rajang likely would avoid them. 

She had thought she was using the scouting mission as an excuse to work out her nervous energy all the way up until she came across a pool of thick blood as wide as a table. She pulled to a stop, inspecting the blood. It had already coagulated into a black dry sheet, but the parts that still glistened were red. The stain wasn’t the kind left by an animal bleeding out, even if it was large enough to be that. It reminded her of an oversized blood drop, scattered as if it fell from a height. 

She decided to follow it. The drop had a slight angle to it, as if the Monster that had left it behind had been traveling east, so she went that way. She found another oversized drop in short order, leading her onward. 

The obviousness of the trail worried her. If she could follow it, so could anything else. The Dragon could be on her tail, or at the end of the path, or anywhere in between. She crouched as she walked, trying to spot any sign of a Monster before they could spot her.

It eventually led her to the massive forest, trees once more reaching impossible heights around her. The drops were growing smaller, brighter in color, and less frequent. She was worried about losing the trail entirely, until she came across an anomaly.

A clearing in the forest. Massive red oaks had been split at the base, leaving jagged stumps that were still several times her height. The trunks, a hundred and fifty feet long, had been piled into a nest at the center of the gap. Dozens of green treetops converged in the center, forming the world’s largest bonfire in waiting. She saw, through the gaps, something rustling within. Something bulky, lit with its own sparkling white light. 

She ducked behind a stump, heart pounding. She’d seen one Rajang, once, a few months old baby. It had knocked her out less than a minute later, nearly killing both her and Souta. This was not just a fully grown Rajang, which could kill her outright, it was a Great Rajang. It was to the Rajang what the Great Jagras was to a jagras. She had reached the point where she felt confident she could kill jagras by the dozens, but a Great Jagras was still a threat if she wasn’t careful. 

A baby Rajang had nearly killed her. This was a Great Rajang. 

Sumi took steadying breaths, shaking. A firm grip on the wood helped still her hands, but there wasn’t anything to be done for her legs. She slipped around the tree, taking a second look.

The gap in the pile of trees had been filled by a single golden-brown eye. It was unerringly locked on her position, not even blinking. Sumi froze.

The pile shifted, gargantuan carcasses falling away as the Rajang straightened itself. It was chewing on a branch, flat teeth smashing it to bits with awful cracking noises. The branch was larger than Sumi’s body by every dimension. The Great Rajang swallowed. 

It was on its hind legs, curled horns reaching eighty feet above her at least. Lightning coursed across its shoulders, sparking and hissing. Its eyes ran across her armor, appraising her. The Great Rajang took a step forward, exiting its self-made fortress.

The ground shook when its foot landed. Sumi winced, but fought the urge to do anything else. She tried to remember anything the people of her village had taught her to do when encountering a gorilla, despite having no idea if it still applied to this monstrosity.

She lowered her eyes, dipping her head, avoiding eye contact. She lost sight of its head while it approached, observing its body instead. It dropped to all fours, revealing a long cut that crossed from its shoulder to the base of its neck. The wound welled with blood, but she could see it healing before her eyes. Shrinking in size, rapidly coagulating. It didn’t even drip anymore. 

Her legs shook, her arms spared only by the fact that they were still clinging to the stump. She watched it pull to a stop maybe thirty feet away from her, boulder-sized hands resting on a bed of dry leaves. She could hear it breathing, steaming the night air despite its relative warmth. The sizzle and pop of lightning audibly shifted positions, running along its body. She watched it dance between strands of hair, leaping from knuckle to knuckle before running back up an arm to coil around its neck. It seemed almost external to the beast, like a storm’s bolt had been caught between its palms and forced to yield. 

Its hands left the ground, the Monster straightening once more. She could hear the rush of air it displaced as it moved, a ghostly wind that filled her ears. Her leg’s shaking worsened, but she still didn’t move. She could taste iron in her mouth.

A rumble shook the world. Her legs finally gave out, mind petrified, but the earthquake stopped as soon as her knees hit dirt. It had been the Great Rajang’s growl. 

A single finger reached down from above, thicker than her body. She shivered, feeling its presence raising the hair across her body. 

An insurmountable force met the back of her armor. She tried to stay on her knees, but it was pointless. She was crushed down into the dirt, following the force because the alternative was the snapping of her joints. Soil pressed through her helmet, grinding against her eyes. She closed her eyes, holding her breath, waiting for the Great Rajang to do something— anything— other than crush her.

She received her wish in the form of pain flashing through her body, an unfathomable heat scorching beneath her skin. Hissing, scratching noises filled her ears, nostrils consumed by the scent of burning and rotting leather. She didn’t scream, couldn’t scream, because anything could lead to the final push that would end her life. She bit her tongue through the pain even while her muscles began to spasm beyond her control.

Lightning crackled. Her tongue tasted the air after a storm. Her mind flickered in and out of consciousness, blackness flashing to white a dozen times. She tried, so, so, hard to stop it, but it wasn’t enough.

A ragged, ragged scream finally tore itself from her throat. 

The pressure released with a thunderclap, her body falling limp. Spasms rocked her body, limbs seizing erratically. She gasped into her helmet, spitting blood. 

The Great Rajang’s presence retreated. She felt the earth shake as it sat before her, waiting. Waiting. She didn’t know for what.

It took her some time, minutes or hours she didn’t know, before she could lift her head. She stared at the Great Rajang’s chest, unwilling to look any higher. The Rajang lowered itself instead, tilting its head so her eyes would meet its own. 

It locked eyes with her for some time, the depths of its gaze too thoughtful to feel natural. She shuddered in relief when the head rose away, sparing her the sight.

A single hand reached up to the Great Rajang’s split shoulder, gray fingers grasping for something. She gasped as the fingers forced themselves inward, reopening the wound. Drops of blood fell to the leaves while the Great Rajang mauled itself, searching. It grunted slightly, a puff of steam rolling from its nostrils, then pulled the fingers loose. The massive hand came towards her, stopping just before Sumi. It opened, dropping something.

A single white tooth fell to the dirt, two feet long. It was perfectly symmetrical, perfectly formed, impossibly flawless. She could see the way its tip narrowed past the point of distinction, too sharp to find any end to its edge. The Great Rajang watched her stay still, arms and legs splayed about her, then it tapped the tooth forward with a fingernail. 

The tooth rolled to a stop within Sumi’s grasp. The Great Rajang sat back, observing. Sumi thought she knew what it wanted.

She pushed herself up, arms shaking with the effort. Her armor had never felt this heavy before, like it was crushing her under its weight. She managed to sit, barely. She took a moment to catch her breath before leaning forward and grabbing the tooth.

Sumi didn’t know if the apparent heft of the canine was because it was genuinely heavy, or if her muscles were too weakened by the lightning. Whatever the reason, she struggled to bring it up to her face to inspect it. The tooth almost hurt to look at. Her eye wanted to follow its lines to their end, seeking the edge that had to come at the tip of anything, but she could never find it. It continued to taper off indefinitely, a fractal of a knifepoint that failed to reveal any meaningful end. 

The Great Rajang stood, propelling another great gust as it moved its body. The leafy smell of the forest was briefly overwhelmed by fur and blood as the gust ran over her. The Great Rajang returned to its tree trunk nest, but didn’t enter it. She watched it root around in the cavity it had formed for itself, remarkably human in its movements. It found what it was looking for and returned to where it had been sitting, revealing to her what it had brought.

In the center of its outstretched finger was a single black scale, as wide as a dinner plate. It was so dark she struggled to track it, the gentle moon and starlight too little to illuminate its surface. She could only tell that the Great Rajang placed it on the ground by identifying the spot that was darker than everywhere else, an empty nothing in a forest of somethings. 

The Great Rajang sat back once more, waiting. Watching. Sumi turned the Dragon tooth upside down, gripping it by the root. She knew what it wanted to know.

She placed the tip of the thing over the scale, letting it rest against the surface. Took a deep breath. And shoved downward. 

Nothing happened. Her arms, weary and weak, couldn’t do much more than balance the tool on the scale. The Great Rajang snuffled, steam falling around her. She risked a glance upward. It looked… irritated.

Sumi redoubled her efforts, quivering arms giving their all to shove the tooth downward. It made no noise, nothing that could be called evidence of progress, but the Great Rajang’s breath stopped steaming. She continued to strain, pushing herself up to a knee for more leverage. The tooth twisted in her grip, moving so slightly she was partly convinced it was her imagination. She seized the hope anyway, bringing her other leg up. She didn’t give up.

Achingly, glacially, with all the speed and poise of an aching grandmother, the tooth slid down. It bit into the scale, creating a hole that widened while her breath heaved with effort. She worked and worked, desperate, slowly becoming aware of a scream of effort that came from herself, until it suddenly gave way beneath her. The tip reached the other side of the scale and the rest came with it, the unexpected lack of resistance tossing her forward as the tooth sank into the dirt below. 

Sumi recovered slowly, pushing herself back up. The Great Rajang had already turned away from her, walking further into the woods. She was left holding the tooth and ruined scale, panting from exhaustion and fear. 

Chapter Text

Sumi returned to a panicked Souta in the early morning, a few hours after the sun set. She wove through their arrayed defense in a stumbling haze, saved several times from accidental impalement by her armor. He leapt up from the fireside bench as soon as he spotted her, sprinting to her.

“Heyyyy Souuuutaaaa,” She managed. He managed to control his sprint just short of a full tackle, spraying her with a cloud of dirt. She coughed slightly.

He took her arm across his shoulders, visibly forcing down whatever furious remark he had planned. “Where in the world have you been? ” He demanded instead, tone just as indignant.

“Would you be less angry if I told you I snuck out to go drinking?” She tried.

“If you knew about a bar around her and didn’t tell me I think I’d be even angrier than I already am.”

“Alrighty, truth time then,” Sumi took a deep breath. “I did some scouting and found the Great Rajang.”

“You WHAT ?” He roared, spittle flying directly into her ear.

She winced away, patting his shoulder. “I didn’t think I’d actually find it, until, you know, I did.”

“Then how the hell are you alive? And why the hell didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”

“I was antsy! I just wanted to go for a run or something, not nearly die.”

“This is the wild, Sumi! Six months ago you wouldn’t have been caught dead outside your village!”

“Hey now, if any blame about my recklessness is going to get thrown around you deserve at least half the blame. I doubt my mother would consider you a good influence.”

“There’s a difference between prowling around your local jungle and silently wandering off into the night a few hundred miles away from the nearest doctor!”

“And I will be sure to keep that in mind in the future, I promise.” 

They’d reached the ember remains of the campfire. Souta helped her sit, which she did with a groan. He pulled her helmet off so he could look at her properly. She didn’t know what she looked like, but she didn’t imagine it was great.

“What took you so long to get back? Why didn’t you drink any of your potion?” 

“It, uh, well--” She unhooked it from her belt, tipping it upside down. A puff of ash floated out to drift away on the wind. “Ran into some trouble.”

He took her chin in his hand, turning her head so he could inspect it. “And what’s this crap all over your face?” 

“There’s something on my face?” 

He gave her an odd look, standing to retrieve something. Sumi watched the dying fire tiredly until he returned. He brought her a bucket, freshly filled with clearish lake water so she could see her reflection. 

She ran a finger along her face, failing to feel the marks that she saw there. Her skin had been reddened in a frightening pattern, tendrils trailing across her cheek in the miniature image of a branching tree. It reminded her of the red veins that might be highlighted by an infection worming its way up a limb, but it didn’t follow her circulatory system in the slightest. The pattern curved down her neck and wrapped around to her spine, running down beneath her armor.

“Shit, what is this stuff?”

“You don’t know?”

“No! Help me get my armor off.”

Souta helped her pull her armor off piece by piece, revealing more of the baffling red marks. They curved down her shoulders and spiraled along her arms, all connecting from a central point. Souta helped her shuck her shirt off, leaving her in only the tight wrap she wore across her chest. 

“It looks like they all come from one spot, between your shoulder blades. I can’t see it, though, and I’m worried about what’s starting it. Take your binder off.”

Sumi began obligingly unwinding her wrap, for once glad Hikoshi wasn’t with them anymore. There was no way she would have tolerated Sumi undressing in front of Souta. 

“How does it look?” She asked, stretching forward so the skin of her back would be pulled tight.

“Like hell, Sumi.” She felt a slight pressure at her back. Can you feel it when I do this?” 

“Not really. What are you doing?”

“Scraping at all the burnt skin back here, girl. Rajang got you good.”

“Yeah, I already figured that out for myself, thanks.”

“How about down here? Can you feel this?” 

His fingernail became steadily more apparent as he moved it down, feeling mostly normal by her mid back. “Yeah, right around there. Gets fainter as you go up.”

“Shit.” Souta whispered. “I don’t know how much a bottle of potion is going to do to something like this.”

“You always know how to cheer a girl up, Souta.”

“Just being honest.” He turned her, inspecting the way the leafy pattern spread from its blackened epicenter. “It does look pretty cool, though, I’ll give you that. I’ve seen worse tattoos on plenty of sailors.”

That gave Sumi an idea. Souta tried to offer her his own potion bottle, but she refused it. Instead she straightened herself, holding her arms out to the side. 

“Draw me.”

“Draw you naked?”

“We’ve literally been in saunas together, Souta.”

“I was more concerned about Hikoshi coming at me with a rusty knife than I was propriety. Why do you want me to draw you?”

“Because I’ve heard Hikoshi spend hours talking about what kinds of tattoos she wants and I think this pattern is going to go poof when I heal up. Getting it tattooed would drive her crazy.”

She heard him bring out his sketchbook, but he didn’t start drawing right away. “Pretty sure impressing your two-month-strong relationship partner is a textbook example of ‘bad reasons to get a tattoo’, Sumi.”

“It’ll be months before I can actually get it. I’ve got time to think. Besides, I’d want it anyway. I damn well earned this mark.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot that part. You nearly died and I’m supposed to be angry at you. What was up with that?”

“Start drawing and I’ll tell you.”

She heard him put the charcoal to his paper, so she began to relay the night’s adventure. The way she’d followed drops of blood to the massive forest, and the clearing the Great Rajang had created. The way it had known she was there from hundreds of feet away, and the way it had approached her so slowly. She told him about it pressing her into the ground, and the shock that had given her the marks. She could hear him fumble when she got to the part about it bringing her something, then give up drawing entirely when she told him it had been a Dragon tooth ripped from its shoulder. He dropped his sketchbook entirely, spinning her around so he could look her in the eyes.

“You have a Dragon tooth?”

“What did you think the big white thing on my hip was?” Sumi asked sarcastically, gesturing to the tooth that had been tied to her belt next to her sword. His mouth gaped. 

“I didn’t notice it!”

“I figured, from the way you didn’t immediately drop everything to ask me about it. Now get back to drawing or I won’t tell you the rest of the story.”

Sumi turned herself back around, bringing her arms back up and continuing the story. Souta had her switch places with him, so she was facing the sun that rose over the eastern lake. She told him about the Great Rajang giving her a Dragon scale, and the way it had disappeared back into the forest as soon as she’d managed to pierce it. He responded less and less throughout the story, silently absorbing it instead. She knew that was only because his focus was being taken up by the drawing, not because he’d stopped paying attention.

After a while he reached up to turn her head to the side, exposing the mark that ran from her cheek down to her neck. She could see him bent over his sketchbook in a crouch that couldn’t be comfortable and knew from long experience that he was dead to the world until the drawing was finished. He only broke away from the book for quick glances at her, refreshing his memory. 

She held the pose for more than an hour, not willing to complain after bullying him into the task. She did wish she’d let him know if he’d finished her arms, so he could let them rest.

Souta finished just as she reached the cusp of complaining, her exhaustion steadily winning over her stubbornness. He turned his notebook around so she could see. 

Sumi gasped. She hadn’t had a look at herself since leaving Narrowstraight, at least not without being distorted through the lens of dirty water and armor, so she hadn’t realized how much she’d changed. Souta had sketched a full scene across an empty page of his largest notebook, going so far as to include the bench she sat on, the lake beyond her, and even the edge of the Stellar’s envelope entering from the left. Souta’s thin charcoal lines seemed to defy the black that they were composed of, gifting the picture a sense of warmth and color. The sun seemed to shine in the sky, filtering through her drawn counterpart’s hair in shocking detail. Souta had drawn the entire thing at a wide angle, as if the viewer was personally looking through his eyes. She was amused to see that he’d even included his armored legs resting on the bench.

In a bout of pure narcissism, though, what really captivated her about the art was herself. Her arms were thick and toned, wrapped with the faint scars of her training. Her oily and tangled hair fell down in a rat’s nest to muscled shoulders, covering all her neck aside from the parts that had been marked by lightning. A massive blot of dead skin circled the space between her shoulder blades, so brutal that she found it hard to believe she wasn’t in agony at the moment. She thought she could see just the faintest outline of the Great Rajang’s finger in the shape of the wound. 

The red lightning creeped out from the border of the wound to cover her skin in twisting tendrils, spiraling into a circle on her lower back while stretching and weaving to crawl across her arms. The single branch that reached her neck was thinner than the rest, comparatively gentle. In Souta’s rendition it almost seemed to caress her jawline instead of marring it.

Sumi held the notebook in her hands for an age, soaking it in. She longed for lacquer to preserve it properly.

“Is that really what I look like?” Sumi asked, voice quiet and ever so slightly raspy. She cleared her throat. “You didn’t get too fancy with it or anything?”

“I think that’s the most accurate sketch I’ve ever made, Sumi.”

“Damn. I’ve gotten ripped, haven’t I?”

“You’ve been ripped for a while, girl. Comes with the Hunter lifestyle.”

She nodded, setting the book on the bench. She’d cut it from the pages later. “Thank you, Souta.”

He blinked at that, rubbing the back of his head. He didn’t seem to know how to respond to genuine appreciation. Eventually he settled on the tried and true. “You’re welcome. I’m glad you like it.”

Sumi finally accepted a bottle of potion, gulping down the bitter brew with some trepidation. Sure enough, the red scars began to fade away as she felt a chill spread out from her stomach. She watched them go mournfully, but reassured herself that she always had the sketch to recreate them later. 

Sumi rewound her binding and changed the topic to the Dragon tooth and what they ought to do with it. Making it a weapon was obvious, but the logistics of it were less clear. There were a dozen ways to use it that they could think of, none explicitly better than the others. Sumi suggested a spear, the most obvious choice, but Souta countered with turning it into an arrowhead, so they could hit the Dragon from range. 

The problem hinged on the fact that the Dragon tooth was so dangerous a weapon that they could use it for virtually anything. Treating it as a tool to shape their own supplies was another option, as well as cutting their losses and running. With a Dragon tooth in hand the Guild would have a far easier time killing the Dragon when they arrived, even without the Great Rajang’s help. The idea of leaving the Monster to die left a sickening taste in both their mouths, though, so they silently agreed to move on from that thought. 

They spent the rest of their day, from the Hunts to dinner, discussing options. Eventually Sumi decided that their lack of consensus was an idea in and of itself, and spent the night hours before bed sketching ideas.

1 Week Later

Sumi handed the newly completed dart to Souta, keeping her fingers well clear of its Dragon tooth tip. She’d never even fought the thing and it had already cut her a dozen times, on several occasions quite severely. The tooth was sharp enough that she hadn’t felt pain until it was already inches beneath her skin.

They’d tried to turn the tooth into something that could be fired by Souta’s bow, but the balance issues proved impossible to resolve. Instead they’d dug into the history books, finding one of the earliest tools Hunters had ever been recorded to use: an atlatl. The ancient examples were a foot or two long at the most, little more than a straight piece of wood with a whittled cup at the end. Souta’s was made of bone, four feet long, and carried a dart taller than Sumi. She’d tried making the dart itself of bone as well, but her test subjects hadn’t flown nearly as straight as the wooden examples for whatever reason. 

It wasn’t as effective as a bow and arrow, but it had been frighteningly easy to make and easy to use. The final product that was meant to launch the Dragon tooth was too large for Sumi to use, but just barely manageable by Souta. You pulled the atlatl over your shoulder, behind your ear, then made a throwing motion. It was critical to keep turning your wrist as you threw so the dart stayed at a level height, otherwise the dart would spike into the dirt or fly off uselessly into the sky. 

The dart itself was made of three distinct components, each of Sumi’s own design. The shaft was fairly short by most standards, six inches long. (Souta’s protestations that six inches was fairly average for a shaft were pointedly ignored) The fletchings were made from the deeper feathers of leftover Anjanath cuttings, tough as steel and light as air. The bulk of its length and weight came from the tooth itself, which was attached to the shaft by a spiral screw whittled into its malleable root. The opposite receptacle was cut into the bone, allowing her to attach and detach it at will. She had been working on different weapons for the last week, and this was far from the last they’d be testing today. 

Sumi appraised Souta as he set up, aiming for a hill some hundred feet away. The book they’d found the design in said atlatls were rarely effective beyond fifty feet, but it hadn’t been written by a Hunter. Sumi watched Souta whip his arm forward, wood whistling through the air.

The six foot dart shot out, just slow enough to track with her eye. It sailed in a slight arc through the air, impaling itself into the dirt at the base of the hill. Souta gave a shout of pride, holding his hand up for a high-five. Sumi limply returned it, already spotting a problem. His elation faded, replaced by confusion.

“What’s wrong? It worked great.”

“Too good. Do you see the dart?”

He shaded his eyes, looking at the hill. “No.”

“Exactly.”

They walked over to where it had landed, finding nothing but dirt and grass. The tooth had proved too sharp, burying itself who-knows-how-deep into the earth. They eventually found a slight tunnel dug into the ground, the only evidence of its passing.

“You threw it.” Sumi told him. “You get to dig it up.”

He made a sound of protest. “You made it, though. You should have known it would do that.”

“You’re the one in charge. You should’ve realized what was going to happen beforehand.”

“Ugh.” He dropped down, looking down the tunnel. “How deep do you think it got?”

“Time to find out, big guy.”

The answer, they learned several hours and a lunch break later, was very deep. Sumi had ended up helping after all, when the project evolved from digging a hole to digging an excavation site. They found it fourteen feet from where it had first landed, twisted sideways. She hated to think of how far it would have gone if the tooth had carried on straight. 

Second on the day’s testing agenda was another ancient tool, an eight foot long spear. She and Souta had killed a lone wandering larinoth specifically for its rib bones, which were lengthy and thin enough for their purposes. It had a slight curve to it, but nothing that couldn’t be compensated for by a simple changing of grip and stance. She screwed the Dragon tooth onto the spear, bringing its full length to ten feet. A sizable counterweight sat at the opposite end of the tooth, to keep it somewhat balanced. Balance was less important with a purely thrusting weapon, though, so the weapon was still fairly top heavy with the tooth in place. 

She kept the spear strapped to her back. She was unused to its presence, so she kept kicking it when she walked, but it wasn’t cumbersome enough that she thought she couldn’t get used to it. Sumi approached their wooden defenses while twirling the spear over her head, familiarizing herself with the weight. She dropped into a crouch when she was close enough to the first spike, ready to test.

Sumi jabbed the spear forward, a probing attack. Her hands didn’t even register the feeling of striking the wood, stabbing straight through the two foot log without a second of resistance. Sumi pulled the spear back, stabbing again. It slid through just as easily the second time, not even slowing, so she stepped into a flurry of stabs, perforating the wound. In moments the stake was so full of holes that it snapped in half, unable to support its own weight. 

Souta whistled appreciatively, prompting her to bow in lordly fashion. 

“Not bad, huh?” 

“You shredded a piece of oak like paper, so I’d say so, yeah. Let me give it a go.”

Sumi tossed him the spear, watching him eviscerate the wood as easily as she had. She was glad all the cuts she’d gotten while handling the tooth were proving worth it. At least, she hoped.

“Think it’ll work against the Dragon?”

“You could shove it through one of its scales, so I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t.”

“Because it’s a Dragon. People like us just don’t kill things like that.”

“Everyone that killed a Dragon started off like us, and they didn’t have a colossal monkey backing them up.”

Sumi snickered. “I thought you said calling a Rajang a monkey was like calling a Rathian a dragonfly. What was it, again? Technically accurate, just enough to make it funny how wrong you are?”

“Yeah, well, I figured ‘Terrifying Elder Avatar of the Forgotten Gods Made Flesh, Fated to Rip the World Asunder’ was a bit too much of a mouthful, so I went with ‘monkey’, for short.”

Sumi laughed. “I didn’t think you knew half of those words.”

“I hate that I know them. Why can’t old Hunters just use normal words when they write things? My books are going to be so easy to understand. Largest word will be three syllables, tops.”

Sumi unscrewed the tooth from the spear, settling the bone haft onto her back. She would have to change the mount she’d made for it, she decided. Sticking straight up was obnoxious, and put the bottom of it in the way of her feet. She’d tilt it a bit, so it was out of her way.

The next weapon they’d made for the tooth was an original idea, a crossbreed of a hammer and pickaxe. A boxy counterweight topped a short handle, off-balance until the Dragon tooth was added. She screwed it in, making sure that the constant retooling wasn’t weakening the root. She doubted it could, since it had taken her more than two days of carving with her Hunter’s knife just to wear the pattern in, but a little extra caution never hurt.

She’d been inspired to make the pickaxe after growing frustrated that she couldn’t turn the tooth into a shortsword. It was the perfect length, but its cylindrical edges couldn’t cut a thing. So she’d mulled over what advantages a sword held over a spear, wondering if she could find a weapon that replicated some of them. 

That thought had ended with the pickaxe. She or Souta could repeatedly slam it into a target with very little windup, unhindered no matter how close they were. If the Dragon had a blind spot, or was being pinned by the Great Rajang, this tool would be ideal. She could swing it into the armor again and again, as fast as her wrist could move. It wouldn’t go as deep as the spear, and had nothing resembling the atlatl’s range, but it still had its own niche. 

She had a few similar ancillary weapons that she’d made, but they weren’t as interesting. She’d made an atlatl small enough for herself to use, and a short spear if attacking the Dragon from far away turned out to be a bad idea for some reason. Those were carried at her hip, across from her sword. Between the weapons, supply belt, and armor, Sumi felt like a human-sized bag of rattling change. 

“What are our odds?” Sumi asked Souta as she worked her way through the rest of the tests, making sure her work was solid. 

“Of surviving, or winning? Because those are two very different things.”

“I’m going to live. Promised my mom that, so I don’t really have a choice in the matter.”

“All right. I’d say our chances of winning on our own are none over none, and our chances of helping the Great Rajang are completely unknowable. It’s survived this long, but it only takes one bad day to change that.”

“By that logic, the Dragon might end up dead someday soon.”

“I guess, but do you really think the Great Rajang could kill it?”

Sumi thought. Remembered lightning coursing through her body. The steamy breath falling in curtains around her. A rumbling growl that shook the earth, trees, and sky. 

And she remembered the Dragon, and the way it had towered over the Rajang. Its ebony scales and ivory teeth, eyes blazing with senseless hatred.

“No.” Her knuckles turned white as she screwed the tooth onto the shortspear. “No, I don’t think it can. Not on its own.”

“Good thing we’re here, then.”

She began testing the shortspear, stabbing another chunk of wood. She knew the tooth would be just as sharp, but she wanted to make sure her connection had been made well. 

“How much can we really change? We’re not there each night. We can see the fog and, but that’s about it. If the Dragon starts to win we won’t know until the Great Rajang’s dead.”

“I’ve thought of that, too, but what are we supposed to do? Just run towards the lightning every night, hoping we don’t get noticed until it’s our time to fight?”

“Maybe. It didn’t make sense before, but now we actually have a chance of hurting the Dragon. We don’t even have to wait for the Great Rajang to lose the upper hand, really. Think about it this way: what if it gets a lucky shot in, and we’re not there to capitalize on it?”

“I guess that would suck, too, but keep in mind that the plan is still to wait for the Guild. A Dragon tooth gives us an edge, but way less of one than a hundred Hunters charging behind us. If you’re planning to survive through the fight you’ll want someone to drag your mangled body free from the battle.”

“I’m not going to pass up an opportunity, and I know you wouldn’t either.”

“How do you know that?” Souta challenged. 

Sumi crossed her arms. “Because you trained me.”

“Okay, fair enough,” He admitted with a shrug. “But I really doubt that opportunity will come.”

“Compromise, then. We’ll scout the battle tonight, get just close enough for you to see it with your telescope. After seeing how they fight we can decide whether or not to make it a regular thing.”

“Deal.”

Sumi snorted. “Wow, you’re really hard to convince. Can’t believe how much gumption you’ve got to resist my plans like that.”

“Girl, you know I wanted to go watch. You just had to convince me it wasn’t suicide.”

“Did I succeed?”

“Sure. Now I just think it’s probably suicide, instead.”

Sumi waited through the day in camp, grateful that no Monsters prowled close enough for her to feel obligated to Hunt them. She wanted her energy for this night.

A bubbling tension filled the air as night approached, washing over the camp. Sumi kept tossing her various weapons between her hands, trying to get herself as familiar with the new tools as she was with her old. Souta picked and prodded at his bow the entire afternoon, oiling and waxing and tightening it a dozen more times than was strictly necessary. 

Their equipment had grown and molded itself as they’d delved deeper into the wilds these past few weeks. Sumi had, of course, shed her metal shell for black lamellar hide, an obvious change. But she’d further augmented her suit with bundles of golden fur painstakingly tied to the chainmail, doing the same for Souta. They looked as if they were secretly furry creatures, shag coats leaking through the gaps of their armor. In reality the golden threads were tougher than steel, wire thin, braided together to hide any gap besides those left for their eyes. Souta’s bow had been restrung once, strengthened by the Lacerta’s leftover tendons. His armor had changed far less, but small alterations decorated it in ways that felt glaring to her. Weightless feathers lined the interior, fresh leather padding replaced his cloth gambeson, and the fit of many of his pieces had been adjusted for his growing bulk. Sumi had been forced to do the same, the constant Hunts building muscle faster than anything else she’d ever done.

A thunderclap broke her from her reverie, rolling over the lakes and plains. Sumi’s head snapped up, following the afterimage of a lightning strike. It had fallen from a cloudless sky, swallowed up by a swirling vortex of black fog. Night hadn’t yet fallen, but it seemed the battle had begun.

Silent communication guided their departure from the camp, supplies having been readied hours before. Sumi shouldered her two spears, listening to them rattle against each other as she jogged. That would be a problem, if she tried to sneak close. It was fortunate that she’d told Souta she’d stay far away. Even if she was fairly certain that she’d been lying, should certain circumstances arise.

They followed the light and sound of the battle, guided by thunderclaps alone when they dipped into the space between hills. Night fell as they traveled, a new moon above. She could just barely see where to place her feet.

She knew they were growing close when the ground began to tremble. It was the erratic byproduct of two Monsters dueling, impossible to track or predict. The thunder had grown painfully loud by the time her foot crunched onto dead grass. A sign of the Dragon’s passing.

The next hill gave them a view of the battle. The titanous creatures were a mile away, yet so large that she could still distinguish their movements with the naked eye. She and Souta dropped to their stomachs, crawling until only the spyglass poked over the hill’s crest. 

The Great Rajang seemed to have two kinds of attacks it preferred. The more common was a furious punch that struck only air, sending lightning leaping from its fist to collide against the Dragon. It threw bolts at its opponent near constantly, blinding her with a frequency that rivaled Souta’s bow shots. The other attack it preferred was different. This was one that took preparation, a moment of calm focus. The Rajang stood in place, eyes closed, light fading from its white coat. Sumi felt the hairs on her arm rise.

A beam of radiant white split the sky, a column of lightning burning its way into the world. The Dragon had brought its wings above itself, anticipating the strike, but it hardly mattered. The brutal heat set the grass alight for hundreds of feet, remnants of energy bouncing between its scales. Sumi heard the murkiest impression of its sound, deafened before she could even comprehend what had happened. 

The Dragon’s mouth fell open, panting. Clouds of black smoke poured out, viscous and sickly. The cloud that already surrounded the battlefield grew opaque.

Souta handed her the telescope silently. She took it, holding it to her eye.

The battle came into stark focus. The black smog was spiraling around the Dragon, twisting upward in an inverse funnel cloud. Its wings spread wide, drawing the fog further up into the air. A great tower of smoke was surrounding it now, spinning faster and faster, until--

Its wings rushed forward, blowing the void towards the recovering Rajang. Its steaming breaths halted, chest billowing as it took a deep breath just before the cloud arrived.

The Great Rajang’s fur smoked and curled, burnt gray smog mixing with the ethereal blackness. She watched veins burst in its eyes, reddening streaks forming across the sclera. The lightning that was slowly returning to its fur sparked and lept off its body, incinerating what fog it touched, but there was too much for it to clear on its own. 

A desperate wheeze was finally forced out of the Rajang, unable to hold its breath any longer. Its next gasp was more of a cough, blood raining from its mouth to coat dead grass. The Great Rajang took two more choking gulps before sprinting forward, breaking free of the bulk of the cloud with a crazed howl. 

The Dragon met its approach with both wings, arresting the charge despite the way its claws were driven back through the dirt. The Rajang’s howl was unending, frightening despite being a muffled imitation filtered by deafened ears. The lightning continued to return to its fur, working its way up its arms to bridge the gap to the Dragon in long arcs, bright bolts holding themselves in the air. She’d never seen anything like it. Electricity flowing like water.

The battle continued on, the combatant’s fury insatiable. She didn’t know what the Dragon had done to enrage the Great Rajang. The ancient ape’s fury was palpable, expressed in every strike and blow. The Dragon seemed tamer by comparison, content to land an accumulating collection of small wounds with sickening satisfaction, delighting in the rage of its opponent. It kept the Great Rajang at bay with its powerful wings for the majority of the closer engagements, rarely risking its head in striking attacks. 

It chose those moments well, though, bloodying the Rajang each time. Blood was dripping onto the plains as they danced, pouring from one Monster alone. The black fog seemed attracted to those drops, gathering into dense clouds anywhere the crimson fell. It behaved the same when it came to the Rajang’s wounds. The void clawed and sucked at the gashes, rolling inward. With Souta’s spyglass she could see the way each tendril of smoke that slipped beneath the skin spread red infection, practically forming pustules and boils before her eyes. 

It took hours, requiring Sumi and Souta to cautiously adjust positions several times, before the battle ended. The Dragon hardly ended the engagement unscathed, burnt smoke wafting away from its body after repeated exposure to lightning, but it was obviously the Great Rajang that decided to retreat. Its wounds were many, boiling with infection, steaming breath pouring out into the night air. The Dragon tried to pursue, wanting to finish the fight, but the same caution that had kept its head out of the Great Rajang’s grasp hindered it now, deliberate pursuit too sluggish to catch up. Sumi risked her first words of the night when the Dragon began to disappear into the distance.

“Why do you think it’s not flying to catch the Rajang?” Her words sounded muffled in her head, enough that she wasn’t sure if Souta heard her until he responded in kind.

“I think it doesn’t want to get hit by lightning while flying. That big strike was brutal, the only thing that it really had to stop and prepare for. It can’t defend itself in the air, and falling after that would leave it pretty exposed.” 

Sumi nodded, leaning close so she could speak quieter. “I’m not sure if the fight’s as uneven as it looks.”

Souta gave her an incredulous look. “What do you mean? The Dragon barely broke a sweat. The Great Rajang was wrecked.”

“I literally watched its wounds close in seconds the other day, Souta. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s back for a second round tonight. And did you see the way the Dragon fought? It was so careful, totally unwilling to take a hit.”

“It’s poisoning its opponent, of course it can afford to be patient. All it needs to do is stall for time before the Rajang collapses.”

“If it was dumb enough to keep fighting, sure, but I don’t think the Dragon is used to fighting something that plays smart. It should have gone after the Rajang at the end, finished it off, but it didn’t.” Souta started to say something in response, but she kept talking. “It hardly ever used its head, which is obviously its most dangerous weapon. It kept the Rajang away from its body the entire time with its wings, never let it get a good swing in on it. If you saw a human fighting that way, what would it tell you?”

“That they don’t want to get hit?”

“That they can’t afford to get hit. The Dragon’s tougher than anything you and I have ever seen, but that Rajang is stronger than anything anyone’s ever seen. I bet you half my pay for this job that it could crush the Dragon’s head like a raisin if it managed to reach it.”