Home is the Huntress
Everything hurt – her arm where it had broken in her first disastrous duel, her thighs like the first time she had scaled the Shatterfang Cliffs, the spot right under her ribs where she’d taken a lopp’s spear in last year’s Tribute. Her claws scrabbled against stone as pain racked her body and she gasped for air. But as she struggled, cool hands gripped her shoulders; a shadow fell over her, and a familiar voice reached her ears, speaking gently in Mikrosian. “Child, shh. You are safe now, you are well. You have nothing to fear.”
“I,” Astoreth gasped. “I – I can’t breathe.”
“I know, child,” the voice chuckled, with maternal affection. “It will pass, once you stop struggling. Sit up now. We do not have long to wait.”
With help Astoreth pushed herself up on her hands, and blinked in the red Mikrosian sunlight, painfully bright in this part of twilight. “How long was I out?”
“Long enough.” The other huntress sat down beside her, stretching out long lavender legs like Astoreth’s own. She was older, with streaks of silver in her black hair, and horns that swept behind her ears like Ejava’s. Astoreth squinted at her, trying to place where she had met the elder woman, and the elder caught her eye and smiled. “What do you remember, child?”
“Remember?”
“You were on Nexus for a little over four years. What do you remember?”
“Nexus?” Astoreth furrowed her brow.
“I am Astoreth of Clan Dunemaw,” she purred, and paused dramatically – just long enough for someone on the other side of the bar to blurt out “aw shit, there’s TWO of them?!”
“…I don’t remember that much.”
“Of course you do.”
Bloodmane’s home was sparse – a bachelor pad if she’d ever seen one. It didn’t matter – that wasn’t what she was there for. The Artist had a way with words – and, as she had calculated, a way with his hands. Her sisters could never know – but in her estimation, they were missing out.
The frail Cassian’s shriek was music to her ears as he flailed and all but flung his book in the air. She was all claws and tail and horns that day, and it terrified him, and she relished every second of it.
“Those early days were chaotic, weren’t they?” the huntress asked. “So much freedom – the most you had ever known. So many new people.”
She grinned at the older male Ejava had been telling her about for weeks – though of course the sobriquet her little sister had bestowed upon him didn’t fit anymore. Carefully she laid one of her own smooth horns against his ridged one and drew back, the sound echoing through the sauna and down both their spines.
She laughed at the little Cassian, and dared him to guess her name. “You must be Sin,” he grinned back at her. “You look like it, walking around like that. Like sin on two legs.”
“YOU THERE! MEAT WENCH! DO I KNOW YOU?” the large male bellowed at Ejava. “Also I would like an entire pile of meat, please.” Astoreth watched her sister's face darken, and decided to grab another bottle of wine for herself. This was sure to be a shuttlewreck worth watching.
She halted in her tracks just in time to avoid colliding with a chua as it darted in front of her and began scaling the treehouse ladder, a brassiere fluttering from its paws like a captured flag. Such strange friends her little sister’s new friend had.
“…it was… very different,” Astoreth agreed.
“Tell me more about that first one,” the elder asked.
He took her to the highest point in Thayd – not for an attack, for that would be foolish with just the two of them – just to prove that it could be done. He held her hand tightly as they leapt laughing from the tallest waterfall in Celestion, and kissed in the mist below. She thrilled to watch him fight in battle, eventually bestowing on him the name he would wear for as long as she knew him for his prowess in a cage bout. When a flaw was revealed in him, for once she viewed it not as a weakness to be despised in a potential partner, but an opportunity for her to protect him.
“No,” Astoreth said.
The elder chuckled wryly. “You had many new experiences on Nexus, didn’t you?”
She didn’t believe it until she saw the video. There she was, stomping down the length of the bar, swearing vengeance on Cagebreaker and Fakehorns and on the Artist (who had not been seen in a year), on everyone who had ever broken her heart or looked at her funny. She watched herself demand entrance to a tournament, and throw her horns back with such reckless force that they broke – and became tangled in – a hanging light fixture. She watched herself sit down and cry in front of the entire bar until her newest friend coaxed her down and to a room…
“I cannot back DOWN,” she wailed to the sand-colored draken who offered her the obvious answer to her conundrum. “I must fight. Will you help me?!? Please?!?” she pleaded – and a draken who had faced nothing but scorn from the rest of their peers, who she would defend to her dying day as stronger than they knew – he took pity on her, and agreed to train her. A week later he screamed in triumph as she leapt from the chains of his own arena to tackle and pin a mechari to the dirt floor with her claws – and when Astoreth stood back up, it was with the taste of blood and victory in her mouth, and she knew there was no going back.
“He put up statues of me after that fight – two of them,” she proudly told the Elder, as she had told so many others. “When Father arrives, I will show them to him, and he – I hope he will be so proud.”
“I am certain the one you call Guardian will show them to him,” the elder agreed.
“No, I mean–” The words caught, and Astoreth swallowed hard. “I… I still can’t breathe. This dust.”
“Do not worry,” the elder reassured her. “Tell me more. You made many friends on Nexus, didn’t you?
“Have you not noticed that I do not address you as I do the others? Think, now. What do I call you?” she demanded again. She watched the puzzlement on the Cassian’s face evolve as she pondered the riddle. “She talks to you like you’re a draken,” the Cassian Vince finally supplied, and as Ironmaw’s eyes lit up with understanding, Astoreth couldn’t help but smile.
“You can’t just keep saying vaguely wise things in place of addressing your emotions!” the strange little Cassian said, and Astoreth grimaced because it was true. She had liked the Glitterwitch before, but after that night, she would forever be in her debt as well.
She glared daggers at the Stonescale huntress she’d named Fakehorns across the fire, all but daring her to make the first move. Somewhat to Astoreth’s surprise, given Fakehorns’ affinity for sparking reckless violence, she didn’t, and so no blood was spilled that night. Or the next, or the one after, as the two grew to understand each other on a personal level despite the growing tension between their tribes. The night Fakehorns called her own Clanlord out on his hypocrisy, in a verbal gambit that would have made Werza smile, Astoreth thought she would die from laughter. The next time they met, Astoreth called her Brasshorns – and called her friend.
“You named her child Beleth?” the elder asked, her voice revealing genuine surprise.
“Well, yes. It started off as a joke – I teased Brasshorns that she should name one of her hatchlings after me, and she told me no, no, and I thought it was very funny. But then she told me that she could not name a child after me not because she did not wish to, but because her clan does not name children after living people, lest the Great Hunt become confused and come for the wrong one. So I named her after my mother.”
“This is true,” the elder agreed. “The custom exists amongst my own clan also. It is a good thing that you abided by it.”
Astoreth peered at the elder curiously. “Why do you ask?”
“I named my own daughter Beleth,” the elder said, and Astoreth beamed in delight. “Did you want your own hatchlings?”
She caught the projectile reflexively, and only a startled half-second later realized she held the Champion’s helmet in her claws. She looked down to where the warrior still stood, breathing heavily, grinning like the sun, and for a moment they were the only two draken in the arena – on all of Nexus. Others would dedicate their victories to the Councilor of Heart, to be sure – but no others could say they had won her heart in return.
“One day,” Astoreth said quietly. “With the right mate. Yes.”
A moment of silence passed before the elder draken cleared her throat and spoke again. “Well – you found many lovers on Nexus, yes?”
She twisted like a snake, wrapped her leg around his arm and pinned the larger draken to the arena floor. “I just wanted to be the little spoon!” the Scholar cried, and she giggled and kissed him behind the ear.
“Why would I come over there, when the view from here is so beautiful?” she shouted, and grinned in delight as the other draken’s cinnamon-colored cheeks flushed an even deeper red. Of course she wasn’t in the market for anything long-term, she told herself, but a little bar flirting never hurt….
The other nightsider’s gaze bored into her as he asked the question, suddenly intensely focused only on her. Something had changed in that moment, almost before Astoreth realized it, but there was no going back. “I told him the truth,” she said, damning the quivering in her voice, her heart thumping beneath the pendant he had given her. “I told him I loved you.” She said it again when he asked, to make sure he’d heard properly – and again, and again.
Standing a head and a half above the man, she normally hated leaning on him – but these circumstances were far from normal; her own legs wouldn’t hold her, and the Cassian’s plastisteel replacements were strong enough for both of them. Bruised and bleeding himself, the Voidjumper held to her just as tight as they staggered back in search of safer ground. “This prolly isn’t the best time for this conversation,” he half-laughed, half-coughed in her ear, and she knew right away what he was going to say – and why he was going to say it. It was on her mind too: that if this was the last chance she ever had to say the words –
Astoreth winced and pulled at her throat. “I can’t breathe. What’s wrong with me?”
“I keep telling you, you must relax. Let go,” the huntress urged. “But you faced tragedy, yes? That is what was on your mind?”
The Cassian had not attended any gatherings in some time, and she had heard he was in hospital. She almost didn’t see him at the moot, lurking shyly in the corners as he was – but see him she did, and she wasted no time in going up to him to welcome him back. When she clasped his gloved hands in hers, she found his right hand to be colder and heavier than the other – but his smile was as bright as ever.
The door to the mansion was already kicked in when she arrived. Astoreth was spattered in blood from boots to horns, but most of it belonged to the tiny soldier she carried. She immediately handed her precious cargo off to the doctor, but her work was not done – the rest of this awkward family was in chaos, and someone had to keep it together, had to be the rock and the pillar they could rely on… and so she was. It was only later the tears would come, as she knelt in the snow stained pink with the blood of a girl who would never dance again, and they did not stop for some time.
She was glad to see the mechari had mostly recovered from the battle. She praised her for her brutality and fortitude, and gushed about the new beauty of her altered soulcore. Astoreth did not lie – the arrangement of exanite shards floating and tinkling softly where her right strut had been was strikingly pretty, and sure to mark her as one to be reckoned with. But still she saw how her friend cast her eyes downward, looking doubtful – she had been changed against her will, and that artless wound would likewise be with her forever.
“Most of it belonging to my friends.” Astoreth said. “I have been fortunate so far. But we saw many triumphs…!”
They made an odd trio, Astoreth thought – the notch-eared chua by one side, the purple-haired Cassian on the other. But having been asked to be a groomsman, she could hardly turn her friend down! And as the music played, and the Cassian Vince’s eyes lit up at the sight of his bride, Astoreth knew at least one thing to be true: out of the three of them, she definitely wore the tuxedo best.
It happened fast – one moment the former gladiator looked done for, and the next he’d kicked the man they called the Wall back, put the handle of his ugly warhammer through his chest and taken his head. He picked up the helmeted head and tossed it at the horrified Highborn lord watching the duel. “That’s what happens when you threaten my fucking family!” the Cassian Jaceck snarled, and Astoreth leapt to her feet, roaring in support and approval.
She stared at the Cassian, and he looked back up at her – past her – with a kind of wonder. She knew that look. “I think the Equation changed,” he said, his breath quickening. “It’s not a systematic drain of Life and Logic out of the void anymore…!” She did not understand his talk of elements and void, but the expression of growing elation on his face told her enough. Of course she loved him enough to be happy for him – she did not know how else to be – but with it came a pain in her heart, for she knew this would take him places she could not follow, and she would be left behind – left alone by one to whom she’d opened her heart once again.
“You still faced times of trial,” the other draken observed. “Times of pain, and loneliness.”
She deftly dodged the first strike of the spear, taking only a scrape on the arm – a trivial mark. But she did not recognize the edge her shorter opponent had over her, and when she twisted to strike back the lopp parried her blow – and suddenly there was a pain in her abdomen, and she felt very cold. It was funny, she thought, though she couldn’t have said why, as she toppled to the arena floor.
Astoreth had prepared for any of a dozen responses to her impetuous gesture of affection – but not for the one she received. Wincing, she felt around her jaw to make sure the Guardian hadn’t broken it, and did whatever she could to keep her feet steady and her eyes dry, lest he find out how much he truly had hurt her. “Nothing bruised but my pride,” she deftly lied, and was both relieved and crushed to realize he believed her.
“I am not my sisters,” she wailed in confession, sudden and unbidden. “They are of Ravok, they are of Shezka, they are of Fazaar. They do not know fear – they do not know consequences of any kind. I belong to Werza, I am wise enough to know how this ends, and I am afraid."
“…I miss my sisters,” she admitted quietly. “We came to Nexus together, but they have all found other paths. I can only wait for them to return… but I fear every day that they will not.”
“But you found other family there on Nexus, I understand.”
“The Dunemaw are my family,” Astoreth said in surprise.
“Yes, but they are not your only family, are they?”
She watched the two of them far below, the Little Sister and Big Brother she had adopted on this planet, and felt curiously alone. She shouldn’t, she knew; their choices were their own, but did she have to be the last to know? She snorted as she looked away… and her gaze fell on a basket of fruit. Seconds later, her Big Brother had pummelgranate juice in his hair, and she was racing away laughing.
“No collective?” She flung her arm wide, indicating the expansive room in which several small groups of people still huddled in their own private conversations. “What do you think this is? What do you think you are doing here? These people….” She sighed, searching for words, as the chua watched her face. Damn the Cassian tongue. “They make the right choices. They are passionate about the things that matter. Their hearts are right. You and I, we are both here because they are worth protecting.”
Astoreth lifted the tiny hatchling onto her head, where it clung to her horns for support and screeched in delight. She turned to face the fire, and was met with a sea of faces – a young draken folding paper spacejets, a stocky Cassian carrying a keg over her shoulder, the Warlord in his seat of honor, a couple sharing brisket and cheese by the fire, a pair sparring in the ring while onlookers cheered, a mechari looking on with concern. Surrounded by these people, her people, she was startled to realize that she was –
“Home,” Astoreth said suddenly. “I understand now – Nexus is my home. Mikros is where I was born and raised, and part of my heart will always live there – but Nexus is where I belong.”
The recognition hung in the air for a moment, as thunder began to rumble in the distance, and the elder huntress smiled. “You are fortunate, child,” she mused. “So many strive their whole lives – decades, centuries – to find home, and never do. You were so young to have accomplished everything you did. Truly your life was blessed.”
“Copy – we’re at the Lightspire. We need to get that beacon down.”
The sun had not moved – of course it never did on Mikros – but Astoreth still had the vague sense that a great deal of time had passed… and at the same time almost none at all. She peered at the huntress with whom she had been speaking all this time. “Where do I know you from?” she asked. “Are you… a Clanlord? Are you Dunemaw?”
The older woman shook her head with a sad smile. “I am a Clanlord, yes. I am not Dunemaw. We have never met before today, dear child.”
“No – no, I know you,” Astoreth insisted, suddenly uncomfortable. She scrambled to her feet, ignoring the tightness in her chest, and stared at the huntress. “I know you. How do I know you.”
“AST! GO LOW!”
The huntress shook her head and rose to her own feet to look Astoreth in the eyes. On even ground, the older woman was an inch or two taller, but the shade of her scales mirrored Astoreth’s own, and their blue eyes were the same, even as the older woman had more creases by hers. The thundering grew louder, and Astoreth glanced over the elder draken’s shoulder to see shapes beginning to form out of a shimmering mass on the horizon.
“There’s too many! We’re too far in!”
Astoreth looked back to the huntress, who just smiled sadly. “Oh, my precious grandchild,” the elder sighed. “I joined the Great Hunt before you were born.”
The more Strain creatures they felled, the more streamed over the horizon, and they only got bigger and meaner with each wave. Corrupted girrok and pumera, humanoids turned inside-out, broken and mutated beyond recognition – the stuff of nightmares. “I’ve locked onto the Beacon’s signal!” came a voice over the comm. “The world forge is on the way. You need to get out of there right now!”
“PORTAL,” screamed a voice in the distance – that was Quint, she realized, only meters away but sounding like he was on the other side of the world. “PORTAL PORTAL PORTAL PORTAL.”
“No,” Astoreth gasped.
Samuel Cotter ducked behind the line, and Astoreth instinctively turned to follow him. Keep on his six – keep him close, keep him safe. At least she would not lose him, with the newly-reworked and revived Equation creating a burning corona of green around him. “I need time to finish the sigil!” he shouted.
That was it. “You will have it!” she howled back at him. Spinning on her heel, she flexed her wrists and planted her feet to face the swarm hurtling towards them, titanium claws flashing in the scattered light.
“NO! I have to go back!” Astoreth screamed. Her lungs burned, but the realization was no longer terrifying. “I’m not ready, I’m not ready I’M NOT READY SEND ME BACK!”
An Exile fell somewhere to her right, screaming. A chua shrieked in fury off to her left, pitching monsters on its sword like a farmer with a pitchfork. Two aurin dove into a group ahead of her and didn’t come back out. Quint screamed like a dying man – and when she turned to help him, a mutated pumera latched onto her left arm, the weak one. She felt the snap, heard her own shriek like it came from somewhere else – and then she was down on the ground, those things above her, snarling, tearing, ripping –
The elder huntress – Astoreth the Adamantine, venerated Clanlord of the Nightshade, Dauntless Spear of the Shatterfang Cliffs – placed her claws on her descendant’s shoulders. “I cannot send you back,” she said, kindly but firmly. “We all have our times, child. You know this.”
“But my time isn’t now!” The younger Astoreth wrenched away and pointed at the hunting party in the distance, her claws trembling. “They’re not here yet! I’m not dead, I have time! Send me back!”
“That power isn’t mine,” her grandmother growled. “And they will be here soon. Do not fight this.”
“Do not –“ Astoreth let out a bark of laughter. “Do not fight this!? Grandmother – honored Elder – do you know who I am?!”
“Yes, yes,” the elder snarled. “You are Astoreth of Clan Dunemaw. Daughter of Bharata the Deathless, Great Clanlord of the Dunemaw! Scion of the peerless Beleth of the Nightshade, greatest bloodshaman of her generation – who would be very put out to know you name her second, by the way – and, oh yes, the leader of the vaunted Dreadtalon Tribe. And you, like every other draken, my granddaughter, are mortal. You are not special. The Strain has taken others; do you think it will not take you too?!”
She couldn’t breathe, oh Werza, oh Five, everything hurt and her mouth was full of blood and she couldn’t breathe. Everything slowed, briefly; the wave parted for the barest instance, and she saw the evac ship farther off. Too far for her, she knew – but then she saw a green flash of shields with familiar sigils. Her Voidjumper still stood – he would make it, he was okay. She tried to speak, but her lips made no sound. She couldn’t breathe, but she kept her eyes on those sigils until her vision went dark.
Astoreth turned away from her grandmother in despair, and found herself staring at the oncoming horde. She could almost begin to make out faces, spears, the sigils on their banners. Clawed fingers closed around her shoulders, gentle but firm. “I am sorry, child,” the huntress said. “But you cannot fight this. You fought bravely, and you have earned your warrior’s death. What happens to your shell now is not your concern; your spirit is safe.”
“Wh-what about the others?” she whispered. “The Cagebreaker, the Scholar, the Warlord, my Champion, my Cinnamon – all of the Dreadtalon – my sisters –!”
“What about them?”
Astoreth turned to look at her again. “Are they safe?! Who will protect them? I can’t leave them alone!”
The elder huntress rolled her eyes. “They told me you were stubborn,” she muttered. “They are draken, Astoreth, and warriors themselves; they will be fine.”
“What of those who are not?!” Astoreth demanded. “What of Dashkova – what of Highpoint? Quint! My friends?! My family, my home?!?”
“You died protecting them, Astoreth. What you have done will keep them safe, and now they are on their own. You are done.”
“What of the Voidjumper?”
Her grandmother’s lip curled up in disgust. “The Cassian?!”
She bristled. “That Cassian shines bright as the sun–“
The elder huntress snorted and rolled her eyes. “You think Samuel Cotter cannot get along without you? He is a Cassian, Astoreth – and more magic and machine than man, as I understand. Him and his Living Equation; you think he needs you? Pretty words spoken in the heat of battle mean nothing when the field has cooled. ‘Bright as the sun,’ bah – I give that sun a week before –”
Before she could retort, Astoreth found herself deafened by a rushing sound, as loud and relentless as the oceans Astoreth had discovered on Nexus, and throbbing like the pulse engines of the ship that had brought her there – and the next second she was blinded by a green light so intense the color lost meaning. She heard her grandmother’s voice still, but could not make out the words – and just as abruptly, she did not care—
— for suddenly everything hurt again. Everything, and nothing, and as Astoreth gasped and felt her aching lungs fill with clean air once again she was startled to see that same brilliant green in a pair of very familiar eyes.
The dirt on Sam Cotter’s face was streaked with tears, a gash on his face was caked with blood, but he was smiling at her, and she realized suddenly that the power he’d been imbued with wasn’t in him anymore. She stared at him, too full of questions to put words to any of them – and then his hand sparked as it brushed her cheek, and he whispered to her “What is a sun without his moon?”
Everything hurt – and as she threw her arms around him, she had never been so grateful.
She was home.
