Work Text:
It wasn’t easy being out of a job.
To Antfrost’s chagrin, the local guild had barred him from ever returning after a poorly timed remark had upset the hot-headed captain and Antfrost had been cast out of the group. Now, he was stuck with only a few emeralds in his pocket, a cheap, on-its-way-to-breaking stone sword, and his backpack filled with little odds and ends that probably held no value. The bright side of all this was that he never had to barter wages for underpaid jobs with the horribly cheap quest manager ever again, but the downside was… well, everything else.
He was starting to wish he hadn’t bought that golden chestplate. The material was wearing down faster than he’d anticipated, and the little extra protection it brought in comparison to the leather he’d had before was… not worth it for the price. He checked his inventory for the tunic and cursed as he remembered he’d foolishly thrown it out. The meager durability it had left on it surely would have protected him once his current piece of armor finally kicked the bucket.
The fletcher was always looking for wood, Antfrost thought to himself. But he also didn’t have an axe and buying a stone one from the blacksmith was juuuust outside his budget. Bare hands? No thanks. Maybe he’d pick up a job as a night guard. His sword was still working – for now.
Of course, to actually accomplish any of this, he’d need to make it to the next town first. It was becoming nighttime, which meant he needed to hurry. Creatures that Antfrost had no interest in dealing with would rear their heads if it got too dark, so without any further dillydallying, he set out along the road through the swamp.
“… Nice,” Antfrost muttered to himself when his only good piece of armor, a pair of chain boots, caught on a ragged branch sticking out of the swamp’s murky waters. Gingerly, he pried the material of the left boot away from the branch. Needn’t be wasting any of the armor’s life on that. As the sun set, Antfrost took a cursory glance towards the sky in hopes that he could see the moon. Nothing visible yet, unfortunately. It would be a good idea to know if swamp slimes would be an issue, but an even better idea would to be clear of the area before dark. Forgetting about the moon, Antfrost kept trudging forward.
A squishing noise behind him made Antfrost freeze in his tracks. He whirled around only to be faced with the tiniest of slimes at his feet in front of him. The little thing hopped all over his boots, trying to attack him to no avail. It was… almost cute. “Hey there little guy,” Antfrost muttered, taking his sword and poking the tiny slime in the side to nudge him off of his boots. “Go back into the swamp water. I’ve gotta keep walking, and I can’t just take you with me.”
After a minute of struggling, Antfrost resolved to simply kick it off of his boots. It fell into the water with a tiny plop. Satisfied, he turned around to continue walking, only to be met face to face with another, larger sentient chunk of slime. Naturally, Antfrost reacted how any grown man would – he screamed and ran past it.
The swamp had grown dark before Antfrost even knew what had happened. Praying he didn’t sink in a deep patch of mud or water with every step he took, Antfrost hurried through the remaining terrain of the swamp, eyes darting left and right as he went on alert keeping watch for monsters and other hostile creatures that may have suddenly decided he was their next target.
Dots of light broke through the darkness ahead of him, and Antfrost internally thanked whatever higher powers there were that the town ahead of him was finally in view. With the light to guide him, Antfrost navigated the rest of the way through the swamp and onto a neat grass path – one surefire sign he was on his way to safety.
The town drew closer and taller as he drew near to it. It looked to be rather small, but that was to be expected for a settlement past a relatively untouched and unsettled bayou. The front gate was hardly much of a gate – it looked more like a fence than anything, but all the same, there were a couple of locals manning it. They both looked decently armed for a town of this size, with shields and helmets keeping them safe. Antfrost lifted a hand in greeting as he approached.
“Got a name for us, son?” one of the guards spoke up.
“Antfrost,” he said as he lowered his hand. “Interested in getting to know a traveler?”
“More like we’re interested in making sure you aren’t among the undead,” the second guard laughed as she reached to open the gate. “ ‘specially at nighttime. Can’t exactly see too well, even with torches. Anyways, welcome to Greenwell. Enjoy your stay.”
Antfrost thanked the guards and moved past the gate and into the town. The cobblestone streets were well-lit with dark orange lamps that looked to be a little old, but not comparable to the shops and homes lining the street, which looked like they’d seen a rough decade or two. Still, it was habitable, he assumed, lest those in the town would have packed up and moved elsewhere. A hanging wooden sign jutting out into the street from above one of the shops notified him of an inn. Perfect. A place to stay and a place for a meal.
“You look like you’ve had a rough night,” the innkeeper commented as Antfrost let the door swing shut behind him. It was only then that he realized he was still covered in dirt and grime from the swamp, and he chuckled nervously.
“Don’t suppose your rooms come with a bath?” Antfrost asked.
The innkeeper laughed. “We’d be out of a business if we didn’t! The whole town’s surrounded by the bayou. In fact, I’m pretty sure our village is built on the only steady piece of land in the whole place.” The innkeeper opened a booklet on the counter. “How long will you be staying?”
“Just the night for now,” Antfrost said after a moment’s consideration.
The innkeeper gave him the price and Antfrost inwardly cringed. Not that it was necessarily a steep price – in fact, it was relatively cheap – but it was a nice chunk out of the money he had left. He fished the emeralds out of his pocket and handed them over in exchange for his room key.
Once the door was locked behind him, Antfrost made a beeline for the bath. It made up for the dent in his wallet – just a little bit. At least he could scrub the mud out from the soles of his feet and from his hair before it dried and cracked. Once he felt relatively clean again, he went for a fresh set of clothes and left his room towards the front of the tavern.
The bar and dining area was rowdy, but Antfrost figured these were mostly regulars, not travelers. He quickly purchased a meal from the bartender and found an empty booth against the tavern wall where he could sit and relax, hopefully. He leaned against the back of his seat and let his eyes fall shut for a moment.
“…been sighted just outside the town, I swear!”
“Oh really? Where, then?”
“Just inside the bayou! Edward was out hunting yesterday over in the east, and he saw a blur of green dart straight up the vines like a man possessed.”
“Blur o’ green? Come off of it, Florence. Could’ve been a gator.”
“It’s what I told him!” the woman, Florence, replied indignantly. “Says he never seen a gator move that fast. Was bright green too, brighter than emeralds.”
Antfrost opened his eyes and glanced to his left, where the two voices he’d been listening to were sat at a table not far from him. The woman, Florence, gripped her fork tightly as she glared across the table at the man keeping her company, whose expression was laced with distrust. The man crossed his arms and rolled his eyes.
“Florence, there’s no way your brother saw something like that. It’s impossible.”
Feeling bad for eavesdropping but too curious to stay silent, Antfrost cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” he said to the two, “but you wouldn’t happen to be talking about the – the masked man, would you?”
Florence’s expression immediately brightened while the man across from her groaned. “You know about him too?”
“Who doesn’t?” the man said. “It’s a children’s story. An urban legend.”
Florence gently smacked the man on the arm. “Peter, shush.” She turned back to Antfrost. “Yes, my brother claims to have seen him while hunting out in the bayou a couple of days ago.”
It wasn’t like Antfrost actually believed the stories, but they were fun to listen to anyways. He smiled. “What do you think he’s like?”
“I don’t know. My brother thinks he’s dangerous, though. Spooked him so bad he turned tail and ran home immediately after the encounter.”
“You know, even I don’t blame him for that,” the man, Peter, muttered. “If he were real, I’d be scared of a harbinger of doom, too.”
“You know, I wonder if the man’s just misunderstood,” Florence mused, putting a finger to her chin. “So many people speak of him as a bad omen, but what if he just hides because of those rumors? Poor fellow. Can’t even show his face ‘round anywhere because he’ll be driven out.”
“Florence, dear, he wears a mask, I don’t think anyone would recognize him if he did end up coming around,” Peter said. “Regardless, if he exists, he’s probably dangerous in some regard. You’ve heard the part about the dragon, right?”
Antfrost raised his eyebrows. “Dragon?” he asked.
In all of his years hearing bits and pieces of the myths surrounding the man in the mask, he’d only ever heard about the dragon once. When he was little, Antfrost lived in a port town, where most people did business in fishing or whaling. There was a house on a large cliff at the town’s edge, and in it lived an old, retired fisherman. The whole town thought he was crazy – except for Antfrost. He would often watch the fisherman as he came down from the cliff to the docks, where he sat and fished for the small catch that swam close to shore.
You’re a peculiar lad, aren’t you? the man had said to him, and invited him to sit down at the docks with him. Antfrost would listen to the man tell him the legends of the masked man in green, and the times when the fisherman had even seen him in the waters. Everybody else had thought it was just a dolphin too close to the mainland, but the old fisherman said he knew better. The fisherman talked at length about the masked man, about how he was immortal, locked in battle with a warrior who was constantly trying to take him down and stop him.
Stop him from doing what? Antfrost had asked.
The fisherman had smiled with his knowing, crooked grin, and said, Unleashing the Ender Dragon.
Antfrost had never gotten to figure out who or what the dragon was, since his parents had swept him away from the old man before he had a chance to find out. His parents had no clue what the old man meant by that, and furthermore warned him not to believe any of the stories he was told. He retained the memories anyways.
“The dragon,” Peter repeated out loud to Antfrost. “People say there’s an extremely powerful dragon trapped in another dimension by our ancestors. They say the man in the mask wants to free it, so that it can destroy us all. Or something along those lines. It’s obviously fake, but that would be the part I’d be the most worried about, if anything.”
“It wouldn’t happen to be called the Ender Dragon,” Antfrost said, “would it?”
Peter shrugged. “Hell if I know.”
At that moment, the bartender made eye contact with Antfrost and stuck his hand in the air to wave him over. “Oh, that’s my food,” Antfrost muttered, excusing himself from his conversation with Peter and Florence and making his way to grab his plate. He thanked the bartender, and by the time he got back, the two at the table next to him were already packing up to go. That was alright; his food would get cold if they kept talking anyways.
Antfrost ate quickly enough, thanking the bartender once again and heading back to his room once he was done. The chilly night air blew through the window, which Antfrost had foolishly forgotten to close. He approached the window, lifted the blinds, and closed the open panel before clicking the latch shut. He glanced out the window for a moment – he’d been given a room on the top floor of the inn, meaning he could see outside of the town’s walls and over into the bayou. The trees were tall, blanketing the quiet waters with a film of ochre leaves. It was a nice sight.
A blur of green crossed Antfrost’s vision, and he did a double take, blinking rapidly before paying closer attention to the murky waters of the swamp. Nothing.
Antfrost shook his head and closed the blinds. It easily could have been a swamp slime. All the talk today about folk legends and dragons were making him see things that weren’t really there – a nice signal that it was time for him to sleep. He extinguished the lantern on the bedside table and tucked into bed.
Morning came with no resistance. Antfrost blinked his eyes open, the last wisps of a fleeting dream lingering outside his memory. He shook his head. There was quite a bit of work to be done today, and Antfrost had no time to lose. After throwing off the covers of the bed, he made his way down and out of the inn and into the lively streets of the town.
The lamps that had been giving off that dim glow during the night were now extinguished, the sun instead providing light across the town. Some buildings cast large, sharp shadows, but the streets were warm and dry compared to the surrounding swamp. The innkeeper wasn’t kidding when he’d said the town was build on the one sturdy patch of land in the whole bayou.
In terms of what Antfrost needed to be on the lookout for, a bulletin board would be the most useful, since that would be what was likely to have the ‘help wanted’ postings on it. He began to wander towards what he assumed would be the center of town, and sure enough, the winding streets took him to the center of town, a large, circular area with a water fountain in the center and shops lining the edges. He craned his neck to see over the various people that were bustling about.
There. Antfrost quickly moved past the people in his way, trying not to bump into or accidentally brush against anyone on his way across the square. He halted just before he smacked right into the opposite wall and stared at the bulletin board in front of him.
“Let’s see…” he muttered, pointer finger tracing the papers pinned to the board. “Help wanted… anything on here say help wanted?”
Antfrost was broken out of his concentration by a couple shouts from down one of the exit streets. He glanced to the side, forgetting the bulletin board for a moment. It seemed there was quite a bit of commotion over there, and Antfrost stepped away from the bulletin board to get a better look.
A blur of green darted through the crowd.
No, not just a blur – that was a man, dressed in a green tunic with a porcelain white mask sat on his face, covering any and all identifying features. Antfrost barely had time to react before the man was rushing by him, shoving townsfolk out of his way and running as fast as his legs could carry him.
“Hey!” Antfrost called after him, but the man didn’t answer. In the direction the man came from, there were a few more shouts.
“Stop that man!” cried a man’s voice. “Thief! He’s a thief!”
Antfrost’s legs moved before he could even think to do so of his own accord. In no time flat, he was running, chasing relentlessly after the man in green. Despite how fast the man was, he was being slowed down by the townsfolk he had to maneuver around, and Antfrost, running through the parted crowd he left in his wake, was catching up. The man turned a corner, and Antfrost followed.
The sun was suddenly obscured from Antfrost’s view, and he realized the man had led him into the alleyway between two of the buildings. Antfrost wondered why that would be, since the alley didn’t last forever – in fact, the end of it was coming up right in front of them – until the man crouched and then jumped up, clinging to the edge of the low-hanging balcony before pulling himself up. Antfrost watched in disbelief as the man hoisted himself onto the roof and continued to run. Footsteps clamored in the alleyway behind him.
“Which way did he go? You there, you were chasing him!”
Antfrost turned around to see three men standing at the opening of the alleyway – one short with dark goggles on, a second with a black hood, and a third with a white band tied around his head. The one with the goggles held a sword – made of iron, by the looks of it – directly out and pointed at Antfrost.
“On the roof,” Antfrost blurted. “If you guys go around, you can catch him. I’ll keep chasing.”
“You?” the one with the headband spoke. “How are you gonna get up there?”
“Climb,” he replied simply, then, unsure if he would make it himself, jumped for the balcony that the man had gone for. Surprisingly enough, he gripped the lower edge, and with a sharp pull, hoisted himself up onto the ledge. The footsteps behind him receded out of the alleyway, so assuming that the three had gone around the buildings like he’d suggested…
Antfrost pulled himself onto the roof, immediately spotting the man he’d been chasing, who was hunched over a little with his hands on his thighs, like he was out of breath. “Hey!” Antfrost shouted, then immediately regretted it. The man jolted upright, then bolted across the tiling of the rooftops.
“Leave me alone!” the man shouted with a tone that left Antfrost wondering – was he trying to tease him? Antfrost frowned, chasing after him. The shingles were odd terrain, but the man navigated them like it was nothing.
“Come back here!” Antfrost shouted after him, but the man paid him no heed. Suddenly, he dropped down from the rooftops, and Antfrost glanced down between the buildings. There was another balcony that he could reach, so a little more carefully this time, Antfrost leapt down onto the landing, then over the edge of that and onto the ground.
“Who even are you?” the man said, and Antfrost realized he’d stopped with his back to the mouth of the alleyway. “No, seriously. I thought there were only three of you. Did they seriously get another one?”
“What are you talking about?” Antfrost said, tilting his head to the side. He stared intently at the porcelain mask, a childishly drawn smiley face on its surface. “Who are you?”
“Not really any of your business, but I’m surprised you’re asking that question,” he said, shrugging. “With all the myths circling around, I thought you’d be a little more – I dunno, awestruck.”
Antfrost’s eyes widened. “No.”
The man laughed. “Right, there it is. Anyways, I have to go, so it’d be nice if – hrk!”
“There you are!” came the voice of the man in the goggles, and Antfrost realized that the other men had come up from behind, outside of the alleyway. The hooded man and the man with the headband had simultaneously tacked the one in the mask, pinning him facedown to the ground. “Slippery, aren’t you?”
“Aw, Georgie, you could at least have let me get clear of the town,” the man in the mask cooed. “You really wanna do this here?”
“Better than risking you getting away,” the man in the goggles snapped back. He looked up at Antfrost. “Thanks for distracting him, by the way. Couldn’t have caught him without that.”
“Uh, you’re welcome,” Antfrost replied. He eyed the sword the other man had, feeling a little uneasy about the way he was holding it. “What… what are you going to do? He’s – he’s just a thief, right?”
The man in the mask started laughing. “Oh, wow, George! Couldn’t catch me even with the help of your buddies, so you resorted to criminalizing me? That’s a new low.”
“Oh quit it,” the man in the goggles, presumably George, scoffed. “We’re done here.”
George raised his sword, and before Antfrost could protest or even react, he plunged the blade down through the center of the masked man’s back. Antfrost watch in horror as the man choked, twitched in pain, and then fell still. George withdrew the sword, and the back of the man’s shirt slowly stained itself red.
“You… you killed him,” Antfrost said in a weak voice. “Why – why would you do that?!”
“Really sorry you had to see that,” George muttered in reply. “I didn’t want to do that here, but I didn’t want him to get any further away.”
“George, you don’t have to explain things to him. We need to start heading back,” the man in the hood said, picking himself up and letting go of the now dead man he’d been pinning to the ground.
“Relax, next sunrise isn’t for a while,” the man in the headband said, following suit. “We have time.”
“Time?!” Antfrost blurted again. “Time for – for what?” On the ground in front of him, Antfrost noticed that the body of the dead man was starting to twitch again. “Wh – is he still alive?” Antfrost lunged forward, attempting to reach the man on the ground, maybe save him somehow, but the hooded man stepped in front of the body.
“Whoa whoa, don’t touch him! Not while this is happening,” the hooded man said.
“While – while what’s…” Antfrost trailed off, noticing how the skin of the man on the ground was starting to glow a very, very bright yellow. Antfrost watched in amazement and a tiny bit of fear as the man’s body slowly started to disintegrate into clumps of shining golden dust. Even his clothing was gone – the only thing remaining was the man’s backpack.
“What the hell,” Antfrost muttered.
“In case you’re wondering,” said George, “no, he’s not dead. We’ve simply incapacitated him for a little while. He comes back. He always does.”
Antfrost took a moment to process this. “He’s not a thief, is he?”
“Nope,” the man in the headband said, popping the ‘p’. “I mean, he stole my bow off of me once, but in general he’s not an actual thief.”
Pausing to collect his thoughts, Antfrost backed away from the men in front of him and the pile of golden dust on the ground. “He’s…” Antfrost hesitantly pointed at the mound of dust, “He’s the masked man, isn’t he? From the myths? And you…”
“These two are Sapnap and Bad,” George said, pointing at the men in the headband and the hood, respectively. “I’m George. And we’re the Hunters.”