There’s somethin’ to be said about the simple efficiency of a knife. A knife will never jam. A knife doesn’t need to be reloaded. A knife will let you survive in situations a gun would be damn near useless in. Kinda hard to build a shelter in the woods with just a gun. Believe me, I’ve tried.
Point is, you master the knife, and you master the art of self-reliance.
Lemme tell you about my favorite knife. She was quite the character, rather sharp, had a bit of a bite to her, but she always had your back when you needed it most.
We called her the Porcupine, on account of her prickly personality. That, and the absurd amount of knives strapped to her at any given moment. The shadows she cast were all jagged edges and sharp points.
Now I know what you’re thinking, most Hunters you know are good with a knife, what makes this one so special?
This woman moved like a hurricane. She could put three knives in your chest from down range before you can even pull your sidearm. I’ve seen her charge straight into a pack of Fallen Captains, all whirling death and whistling blades, and come out the other side without a scratch, leaving a cloud of leaking ether and armless corpses in her wake.
The Porcupine wasn’t just a master of the knife. She WAS a knife, the embodiment of self-reliance, the queen of clean cuts.
But she was stubbornly solitary. Damn near impossible to argue with as well, by the way. But she never once called in for backup. She was a survivalist. She was the Porcupine. She was the Knife.
We found her body on the Moon a few days ago, deep inside House of Exile territory. And surrounded by a whole mess of pincushioned Fallen bodies. We couldn’t get a whole lot from her Ghost’s last few moments, but it looks like she pushed to deep, bit off more than she could chew, but gave it hell anyway.
The Porcupine ended up with five shockswords in her chest for her trouble. But she made them work for it. There were no retreating Fallen tracks in the area, or any sign of pikes or skiffs having flown though recently. They all went down trying to kill this one stubbornly self-reliant Hunter.
Even the strongest knife can snap, if used incorrectly. I never shoulda sent her there, not alone. She was my favorite Knife, and she snapped because of a call I made. Because I used her incorrectly.
