Hybrid hunter empires season 2 au. (part one, probably)
Hybrid hunters arrive in the empires. Some take advantage of the kindness of Sanctuary, and some hike into Chromia. While Sausage may fear for his people, and perhaps his own life, Scott doesn’t think fear is needed until it’s too late.
(In-game chat is communicators here.)
Sausage glanced nervously out his window, the tavern was filling up quickly and he had only just enough time to get his hybrid residents hidden away in the locked up blacksmith. Until he could get them out and to a safer place, it would need to do.
His communicator in his hand had a typed out message, “Hybrid hunters in sanctuary, backup needed” but it was, for now, unsent. How could he lead Sanctuary when he didn’t have the guts to face these monsters, and how could he admit such a flaw to his fellow rulers and guardians.
He deleted the message. Instead, he sent, “Hybrid hunters in Sanctuary, be careful.” And a private one went out to Joel, “Keep Hermes this week”.
His messages were received with varying levels of anger, some of his friends understood that Sanctuary would allow everyone to be safe, no matter how horrible the people, but not everyone did. Admittedly, the more aggressive messages that came from Joey, Shubble, and Joel made Sausage smile more than the understanding ones from Katherine.
Scott never replied, but nobody would notice for a while. He wasn’t always great at responding, and Sanctuary was quite far away, and Scott wasn’t a hybrid, so why would he need to worry at all?
The truth is, hunters had entered Chromia as well even if Scott didn’t know at first. Scott would have been less willing to house them than someone like Joel, but they paid well and he was a busy man so he never asked what they were doing there. As long as they didn’t touch his llamas, he had more things to worry about than a group of foul-mouthed travelers, and that’s all he thought they were.
The day the hunters arrived in Chromia, Scott fell ill. He continued to work, weeding the flower gardens and tending to his animal friends, but throughout the day he kept growing dizzy while headaches came and went. It wouldn’t be until the second day they were there, the day Sausage’s message would have reached him, that Scott would actually realized who they were.
Their leader, a charismatic man that could rival Joel in dramatics, approached Scott near the windmill in the early afternoon. He was speaking, but Scott couldn’t hear him. His head was spinning and, if only for a second, he could swear he saw his father with his magical eye. He tried to pay attention to what the leader was saying, something about trading his necklace for an extended stay in the tavern, but Scott could only hear ringing and he could only see the light from the gemstone on the necklace provided by his magical sight.
For a moment, Scott wondered if they had poisoned him. And then he fell, and his mind and body weren’t quite his. A kind of hungry greed he’d never experienced, or even heard about, took over him and he stood to attack the hunter leader and take the gemstone for his own. Only now, he didn’t feel right standing on two feet.
The first thing he heard, as the ringing cleared away only to be replaced by boiling rage, was the leader of the hunters loudly proclaiming. “A dragon?! Who could’ve guessed? Boys! We’ll feast forever if we catch this one!”
--
The SHERIFF messaged the ruler’s chat later that day, “Scott was supposed to set up a dye trade with me today, but he’s not responding to me. Can anyone get ahold of him?”
And Scott wouldn’t be able to check that message, or any of the ones he got while his friends rightfully feared for his safety.
As hunters push their luck and rulers curse their boundaries, a draconic Scott is captured by the ones in Chromia. Who will find him first, and will they be too late?
Pix sent a link to the ruler’s chat, “I think it’s best if we avoid large meetings while there’s a passive threat in the area.” The link led to a document, which had an amount of information that would have been surprising if it came from anyone else, that held information on the hybrid populations of each empire.
Animalia had the highest population, with everyone either being a hybrid or fully animal, then Gobland with an entirely goblin, which weren’t technically hybrids but definitely weren’t humans, and pig population, Tumble Town was next with nearly everyone being a cat or reptile, then Sanctuary, Dawn, and finally the Eversea. The Evermoore and False and Pix’s areas were relatively empty, Chromia was only Scott and a bunch of llamas for the time being, the village below stratos was entirely humans, and even Pix wasn’t certain of what category Joel fell into.
Pix admitted in the notes of the document that he wasn’t very familiar with modern hybrid hunting practices, but if older practices were still in effect that Scott and Shelby would both need to watch out because magic wasn’t exactly left alone either.
Joel probably only scanned through Pix’s notes before joking about Tumble Town being at extreme risk because their Sheriff is a toy, which temporarily made The SHERIFF forget why he hid his rattlesnake scales before Pix’s document reminded him.
It was true, in Tumble Town and the surrounding areas most native inhabitants were desert hybrids. Still, the population wasn’t quite dense enough that nobody questioned him parading as human. He was human enough, the patches of scales were few and far between for the most part, but he was still a hybrid.
Maybe he had forgotten the treatment hybrids got when making the rules, because he forgot to make what the Hybrid Hunters did illegal, unless they started stealing mounts. If he suddenly changed it, it’d seem like they couldn’t deal with the hunters in any other way. He was in a similar situation to Sanctuary, who offered a safe place for everyone, unless they made the first move nothing could be done without harming the pride of not only the rulers but the law abiding citizens as well.
He sent another message to Scott, who would surely get mad at the number of messages when he actually got around to reading them. “What could possibly be more important than at least responding while there’s an empiric crisis happening?”
And he got no response.
–
Scott wasn’t sure what happened to his communicator, or his clothes and inventory, when he became a dragon. He was sure even if he still had anything, the hunters would have taken it from him when they wrestled him into a cage and covered it with a thick canvas. Scott wasn’t used to fighting on four legs, or without arms, and with no weapons or armor.
Normally he didn’t have much nervous energy but now, in a cage and a new form, he wanted nothing more than to pace. The cage didn’t leave enough room for that though, only enough room to rub his sides along the bars and peel away layers of dull gray scales that should’ve been shed years before. Scott hadn’t gotten a good look at his new appearance, but he knew his feet were dappled in grey and black like ashy cobblestone. From that and the coloring of his shed scales, he feared he had lost his interesting, colorful exterior in the shift.
It must have been the dragon’s stronger sense of hearing that Scott seemed to now possess, but after what felt like forever he heard the sounds of rocket propelled flight from far off. He knew a good amount about hunters, from a previous profession, so he knew it was rare for them to wear the false wings of adventurers. But he did know a number of people who required them. Jimmy, Joey, False, and Pix. It felt strange for him to hope that one of them may be nearby, but he did. He was, although he wouldn’t enjoy admitting it, scared.
He would grow even more scared for his own well being when the cage he was in started to be moved, and eventually they settled into the steady pace of a caravan.
–
The hunters often traveled across the sea, Joey had seen his fair share of them. He half expected to see Skeletron’s men working with them, but instead it seemed his enemy was keeping his crew away. Still, Joey wasn’t going to waste this opportunity. Despite the danger, Joey wouldn’t ignore this chance to find his missing crew mates. Everyone aboard his ship had been hybrids, including Joey himself who hid a pair of leopard ears under his bandana.
He had a map of the empires out, probable entry points were marked down and Sanctuary was circled. He had already paid a moonlit visit to Sanctuary to check for familiar faces, but that group didn’t seem to carry any living cargo.
Dawn seemed like another prime spot for arrival, and so he marked it down before taking to the skies on his elytra.
–
This all would take place the day after Hunters were found in Sanctuary, and therefore the day after Scott had his own encounter. Joey would circle above Dawn looking for anyone who wasn’t supposed to be there, and spy a caravan heading towards the coast. Specifically, a small hunter caravan heading from Chromia to the coast. No hunters traveled in such a small group, so he knew they weren’t it, but it also meant something had split them.
Perhaps a special cargo that wasn’t worth the risk of continuing on land for long traveling periods.
It was no secret that Pirates and Hunters sometimes crossed over in one line of work, bounty hunting, and Scott’s sketchy past wasn’t exactly unknown either. If anyone from Scott’s past had put a claim on his head, well, he would be considered important cargo.
From the skies, Joey couldn’t tell who or what was being transported, but he could tell they had come from Chromia. He was wrong to scout out Dawn though, they had docked somewhere nearby but unclaimed.
He landed on their ship, the Vanquisher prepared for battle, but he met no resistance. The ship had not been abandoned, he found evidence of a battle below deck, but nothing alive remained. What did remain, however, was an all too familiar calling card.
A skeleton flag hanging above the captain’s door. He had never been happy to see one before, but on an enemy’s ship he wasn’t disgusted by the sight. It did mean that his enemy got the goods before him, but it also meant for once Skeletron and him had a common enemy.
He remembered something from Pix’s document saying that magic wasn’t liked very much, and acknowledged that a necromancer probably wasn’t appreciated either. Harder to sell a beast’s hide when it was trying to kill you.
