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I may have finally found a career that I could love??

I'm still going to have to finish my degree and work as something else for a while

But maybe I now have a future goal that isn't just 'find a job that's tolerable nearby'

#hopeful musings #it involves dogs and helping people!#but i'd have to pay for the training #so first #another job

It had been two days since Quai’s conversation with Valsera. She had tracked the group of poachers to a forest near the southern mountain ranges: they had made camp in a little clearing, their hunting rifles in pride of place on a portable rack next to their pull cart, which contained a selection of their ‘trophies’. A few canvas tents were scattered about the clearing, and a low fire burned in a pit surrounded by log sections.

Quai stood just out of the reach of the fire’s light, invisible to the five men who sat around it drinking mead from tin mugs. They were all engaged in a lively debate about a rare breed of wolf they were trying to track.

“I’m tellin’ you,” one of the drunker men slurred, “we lost ‘em when we took that cut through the hills.”

“Yeah!” another one chimed in. “We shoulda never listened to Garry— ‘shortcut’ my arse,” he added with a chuckle. A third man— Garry, presumably— rolled his eyes.

“It only took longer ‘cus Will had to piss in private and got lost in the trees,” he said, pointing towards a fourth man. The fourth man didn’t reply: he was slumped in his seat, the tin mug tipping dangerously in his hand. They stared at him for a moment, then Will let out a snort in his sleep and sloshed a bit of mead onto his lap. The rest of them chuckled and went back to their conversation, and Quai continued to watch, to wait for her moment.

Quite suddenly, the fifth man— the one who hadn’t spoken yet— stood up and headed directly towards where Quai’s hiding place behind large pine. He stopped mid-way between her and the group, a hand on his fly, and squinted into the dark trees.

“Oi,” he called over his shoulder. The others fell silent and looked to him. “Gimme a torch. I gotta take a piss,” He held out a hand behind him, his gaze still sweeping the treeline. One of the men hauled himself to his feet and grabbed one of the torches they’d used to light the way to their tents and walked it over to the one who had called out.

The other men went back to their conversation about Will’s navigational shortcomings as the fifth man—now holding a torch— started directly towards where Quai stood. She remained perfectly still, pressed to the far side of a tree trunk and invisible to the naked eye. With any luck, the man would do his business and leave. He swung the torch around as he peered into the darkness and tugged his fly down with his free hand. Quai politely looked away, keeping him and the torch just in her periphery.

When the man had finished his business a few moments later, he turned to leave. It was subtle as she shifted slightly in her position, but Quai’s left foot pressed down on a small twig and snapped it. The faint, muffled snap wouldn’t have even been audible beneath the drunken chatter of the other poachers if the man closest to her had been just a few more feet away. Instead of continuing back to the camp, he swung around, torch in his hand, and crouched low to the ground.

“Something here?” he asked in a low voice as he moved the torch back and forth. Quai didn’t dare move, but she reared her head back as the flames passed dangerously close to her face. “Or someone..?” he ventured.

Time to improvise, she thought. In an instant, she willed the Shadow forth: an inky blackness engulfed the end of the torch and snuffed it out. The man let go of the torch in shock and it fell to the ground, rolling a bit in the dirt and pine needles.

“Who’s there?” he hissed. The others still hadn’t noticed that their companion was gone, or that the light from his torch had disappeared in the woods. Before he could take another step back, a darkness— darker than the forest floor on the cloudiest night— engulfed him as well. He opened his mouth to call out to the others, but found his words choked as something uncomfortably pushed into his mouth— he tried to cough, but something was preventing him from even taking a breath. As his consciousness faded and he fell to the ground, he heard a whisper:

“Your friends will have the same fate,” Quai murmured into his ear, just before the man’s head lolled to the side. She waited for a few minutes to be certain he was dead, then stood up and brushed the dirt from her legs.

The other men around the fire were none the wiser: they’d tapped another small keg of mead and were drunkenly singing sea shanties. Will had woken from his nap and was rummaging through a crate of rations; he only cut his hand twice trying to open a tin of beans, which he dumped into a pot along with a few large chunks of cured ham, and a handful of whatever dried vegetables they’d brought along.

Quai, meanwhile, had left the relative safety of the trees and was creeping towards the group, still invisible. When she was directly behind Will, she reached again into her pocket and pulled out the tiny seed, then dropped it into the pot when he wasn’t looking and crept away to watch.

“Hey,” one of the men said suddenly as Quai crept past a tent. She stopped in her tracks as the other men fell silent.

“Hey what?” Garry asked.

“Where’s Luke?”

As the others finally started to realize that one of their number was gone, they all made to get to their feet before they heard it: a loud snort and a muffled snore, coming from the direction of the tent where Quai stood. Four pairs of shoulders relaxed.

“Bugger snuck back to the tent,” Garry said with a laugh that turned into a hiccough. The others joined in the laughter as Quai stood next to the tent, her hands cupped around her mouth and nose. For the next few minutes—until the men had forgotten again about Luke and his apparently stealthy trip to bed— she continued to make the occasional snoring noise.

Half an hour passed, then an hour, and Quai leaned against the tree next to the tent with her arms folded as she continued to watch the men. Finally, at long last, Will pulled a ladle from the crate and started to disperse the heated food. Quai lifted her head a bit and watched intently, curious to know who had gotten the seed.

She didn’t have long to wait: as Garry finished his bowl, he set it down, looking a little green.

“I think that ham’s turned,” he said to Will, a hand on his stomach. Will looked over at him and was about to say something, when Garry let out a sudden, loud belch and then sighed.

“Never mind,” he said with a grin. Quai rolled her eyes, but continued to watch.

And watch.

Another hour went by, and the food was gone: the pot was empty, the fire was low, and the mead was at its end. Two of the men were trying to shake the last of the mead from the keg into a mug, and Will had dozed off again in his seat. Garry sat on the ground, resting on his palms with his head tilted towards the starry sky and his legs stretched out before him. Absolutely no part of Quai felt any sort of remorse for what she was about to do.

She moved once more towards the group and drew one of her new elementium blades from its sheath. Before any of them knew what was happening, Will had fallen to the ground with his throat slit. A few seconds later, Garry suffered the same fate: a deep slice had appeared in his neck as Quai had grabbed him by the hair and pulled him backwards against her knee for leverage. The other two men scrambled to their feet and ran towards the gun rack by the tent, shouting for Luke.

Quai appeared quite suddenly in front of them, the blade in her right hand still dripping blood: both of them skidded to a stop.

“Luke’s dead,” she said to them.

“The fuck!” one of them yelled at her.

“I could ask you the same thing,” she replied calmly. One of them made to move around her, but she raised her blade at him and he stopped.

“You can’t just go ‘round killing people!” the second man said, his gaze fixated on the blade.

“Probably not, but I’ll sleep better tonight knowing I’ve rid the world of five degenerate poachers,” said Quai. She smiled at the pair of them.

With a yell, one man came at her, brandishing a fork, and the other made a beeline for the gun rack. Quai kicked out a boot and hit the would-be stabber in the chest with a thump as she twisted her body to throw her blade at the one who was running: the blade caught him in the back of the knee and he staggered sideways. Quicker than should have been possible, Quai was at his side with her second dagger drawn— the slash across his face was so quick that the shock caused it to not even register for a few seconds.

Meanwhile, the other man had recovered from the kick and was running at Quai with his arms outstretched and a murderous glint in his eye. She spun out of the way and dropped low to the ground, tripping him as he went past: he flew forward and landed on his partner, who was screaming on the ground with his hands covering his bloody face. As Quai stood again, the man who had tripped scrambled to his feet and started to run for the tree line. She reached down into the back of the screaming man’s waistband and grabbed the gun he’d forgotten about, pulled back the hammer, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. With only a few feet to go before he hit the dark safety of the woods, the running man was hit in the back. He fell to the ground.

Quai turned her attention back to the screaming man, who was crawling along in the dirt as his face dripped blood. She was about to shoot him, when he let out an uncomfortable gurgling noise: a moment later, something green erupted from his abdomen and started to move snake-like along the ground. Soon it was joined by another, and then several more, until the ground around the man was writhing with bloodied plant tendrils in search of more food.

Better late than never, she thought as she moved over to the man by the trees and started to drag him back into the campsite. She did the same with Luke, Garry, and Will, and soon the plant had grown considerably as it twisted its way happily through their corpses.

“Hey. No,” she said firmly, as a little offshoot started to wind its way curiously around her ankle. She pulled her leg away and went towards the poachers’ makeshift lodgings to rifle through their belongings for valuables, while the plant made squelching noises in the dead men’s bodies. A few minutes later, she’d grabbed a messenger bag and some money, a couple of watches, two more pistols, a box of ammo, and some various rings and jewelry items that almost certainly didn’t belong to any of them. As an afterthought (and perhaps a gift for Andrew), she took the nicest rifle from its spot on the gun rack and slung it over her shoulder.

With one last look at the bloody mass of plant life, Quai moved back into the woods and headed north again, towards the Breach.

((Mentioned: @harvee-sarah-zena‘s alt ))

#Another job