Anira stayed exactly where she was, comfortably draped, one elbow hooked lazy around Ilan’s shoulder.

"To the Broken Mirrors with your glory, song slinger"

“Because if we’re not going, Garrod, then I’ll have my silver back.” She straightened, smoothing her doublet as if the matter were already settled. That coin was for witness. For wonder. For glory. For legends. "I didn’t pay a maza coin to be dragged along on your fishing trip. If I wanted damp boots, bad food and lectures about practicality, I’d visit my uncle.”

Then Garrod’s word hit her. Pear-shaped. She paused. Truly paused. The bard was eerily silent for a few heartbeats. “Pear-shaped?” she repeated. The minstrel slipped from Ilan’s lap just enough to lean forward, palms to the table. "I’d rather be pear-shaped than shaped like a white-haired asshole!"

"Reyoso took up the contract, not two days ago"
"Chingalo, pues"
"BE READY COME MORNING!"

She did not missed it, the way the name Reyoso had landed like a gauntlet thrown at Garrod’s feet. “Well...” she said lightly, turning back to the table. “Would you look at that... Miracles do happen." ...and somewhere in Khurun a pig sprouted wings and flew off toward the sunset.


The Happy Goose Inn lay half-dreaming still. No laughter, no clatter, none of the usual sins parading about in daylight. Just the low creak of old beams stretching their joints. The air smelled of spilled wine, cold ash, and the promise of coffee strong enough to forgive yesterday.

A few people were awake. The sort who always were. A hedge knight hunched over a bowl, spoon moving. A merchant counting coins he’d already counted twice. The barmaid moved quietly, barefoot on the boards. Outside, the street was softly stirring. A cart rattled past, wheels complaining. Somewhere a dog barked, then thought better of it. Crows cawed impatient from the rooftops, already arguing over things not yet discarded.

Most of the inn still slept off their drunkenness, their bargains, their mistakes. Among them, the bard.
 
Brinda could not help but burst into a fit of laughter. Face scrunched up, coupe of wine cradled and cribbed against her as she clutched it with her lone arm. "Man, that really got the old grouch's goat, didn't it?!" She snort.

Ilan but raised a brow at the youth. "Everyone has their strings to pluck, little Mouse," his eyes looked far away, whilst his lips wore a smile that was hardly there, gave his own drink a swirl, as he sat in that way of his.

Wholly undisturbed, and all too at ease.

"It's simply a matter of finding the right notes to press, wouldn't you say, Lady Lark?" he smiled easy as honey spilled from a spoon.

Brinda watched with wide, glazed over eyes. Hiccuped. "Ye-yeah?" she asked. And took another big gulp from her cup. Grab, missed, then grabbed again at a some piece of cured meat. Stuffed into her mouth and chomped at it.

THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP.

Rattled the door beyond the Bard's room door. A growl. A grunt. Muffled through the planks.

THUMP THUMP THUMP.

"HEY," the word almost a bark. The breath that followed, hissed through snarled teeth. "I said, ready come morning," the Hunter eased out of his throat with all the grace of a hound twitchy for a rabbit.

Brinda. Half crumpled in some heap on the floor. Holding onto the bottle like one might a lover, uncurled from the pretzel she had found herself in. Short cropped hair a rat's nest, flared out.

Ilan stirred from his coil, and slipped out of the sheets with hardly a groan. No rush to it. Yawned as he stretched and padded towards his clothes. The width of his elegant ears, glowed red with the dawn's light pouring through the windows.

Brinda blinked. Blushed, and turned away before she stumbled up to her feet and looked about as she kept the bottle clutched to her chest and tried to steady the spin of her head.
 
THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!
Morning, as it turned out, had arrived far too early and far too loudly for a room that had, only hours ago, been a small kingdom of indulgence. She made a soft, offended sound and pressed her face deeper into the pillow. “Mm. No,” she murmured to the universe, declining the invitation.

THUMP.

Ilan was already awake. The dawn caught along the lines of him, all warm tones and easy composure, the dawn had agreed to treat him kindly. Behind him, Anira did not so much wake, but she turned her head slightly, watching Ilan through the veil of her own half-wakefulness, lashes low, expression somewhere between appraisal and amusement.

Eventually ....eventually, she rolled onto her side, hair spilling like pale gold across the pillow. “Garrod,” she rasped, with deep personal ...regard. The bard climbed over to the edge of the bed, untangling herself from sheets. One leg found the floor. Then the other. She sat there for a moment.

THUMP.

“Gods above and below,” she muttered, voice roughened by wine and folly. “I will kill him,” she informed the room.
The room was a battlefield of indulgence. Sheets falling from the bed. A tray overturned on its side, scattering sugared figs, honeyed almonds, and the remains of some scandalously expensive cheese that had clearly died a heroic death sometime in the night. A goblet lay on its side, bleeding the last of its wine into the grain of the wood.

THUMP.

“Yes, yes,” she murmured and slipped from the bed in one smooth motion, gathering a loose shirt about herself. Fine linen, naturally. It fell loosely over her frame, soft and pale, slipping off one shoulder as though it had better places to be. It reached mid-thigh. On her way to the door, she paused only long enough to pluck a strawberry from a bowl. Considered it. Approved of it. Took a bite. Sweetness bit through the remnants of wine.

She opened the door just enough. Leaning one shoulder into the frame, hair in a soft, golden disarray. Anira took another bite from the strawberry as she studied Garrod standing there like a collector of joy. Took her time with it. Chewed. "You" Swallowed. Slowly. The minstrel's voice soft and thick as cream, “never specified which part of the morning...”

Smirking she opened the door and stepped aside, to let Garrod in. “If you must be this loud, at least be charming. There are witnesses.” She walked back into the room, heading toward her pile of clothes. On her way there, she reached out and ruffled Brinda's hair in a friendly way.
 
Green eye snapped to the crack in the door, traced the skin of shoulder, tumble of hair, and bright red strawberry before landing on the bard's studying blues.

"You..."​

He scowled and seethed as she went on, churning in her own butter.

"never specified which part of the morning..."​

"It's nearly noon already," he hissed. Neck rigid as it craned with the barely restrained want to bite something off as she smirked.

Anira stepped aside. A growl rumbled from Garrod's throat as he watched the Lark pad away with each long stride of hers. His green eye scrawling across the devastation scattered in her wake. The whiff of rich cheese mingling with all the cloying sweetness of spilled wine, honey and fruit swirled with the sweaty sour of the room's night full of ill preparation.

Ilan was already ready. Face calm and content. As always. Long fingered hand grabbed up the long curved sabre, and slipped it into his sash. He moved like everything was precisely where it needed to be. Nothing out of its place. Grabbed up a honeyed date, and offered it up to his counterpart.

"Want some, Garrod?"

A click of teeth. "What I want, is for you lot to take this seriously,"

"Oh, come now," Ilan popped the date into his mouth. Sucked clean his fingers as he moved across the room, and helped Brinda up off the ground. "We've a long road yet, before we come across the Old Red Lady,"

Mouse shuddered and shook. hugged tighter the empty glass bottle. "Moral, One Eye," she grumbled groggy. "Its important for moral,"

Garrod shook his head. "Absolute mummery," he muttered, and turned toward the hallway. "I've gotten us some half decent horses," he said into the room he had yet stepped into. "Kits packed, and we are ready to ride out," he assured. "North east, to the Ridges of Hathimun," crossed his arms and leaned against the door frame. "Heard word that is where the old legend awaits,"

Ilan smirked. "You've had a busy morning,"

Garrod tched, whipped his head away. "Don't mock me, cabron,"

"Aye," Ilan went on, adjusting his earings, and letting his hair fall neatly against his back. "El porbrecito,"

Brinda squint. Head still hammering. Looked to Anira. Felt something twist wrong in her guts. Got up, ran for the washroom all slap of feet and wiley legged. Door flung open. Slammed shut. A horrid hork sounded from the room.

Garrod laughed low like dead fire's smoke. "Might be you learn to listen some, Mouse,"
 
Brinda made a small, miserable sound somewhere behind Anira, folded over her saddle. “I am dying,” the girl whined. She uncorked the flask again and waved it gently under Brinda’s nose. “Drink.” Anira's voice had that thin notes of someone who might also be negotiating with death. Brinda took the flask like it had personally insulted her. The bard straightened in her saddle, wincing only slightly as the sun reminded her she had, in fact, lived too well the night before. Still, she lifted her chin, eyes scanning the ridgeline like she expected annihilation.

Brinda drank.
There was a moment, brief and hopeful, where nothing happened.
Then the girl's face collapsed. Her eyes widened. Her soul visibly attempted to exit her body.
“OH!” she gagged, doubling over in the saddle. “That’s... THAT’S PICKLE...”
She spat the rest into the dust with the force of a dying curse.
“Pickle juice… yes” the bard said carefully.


The further they rode, the less the world felt like the world.

At first it was subtle, trees too blackened, heat had licked at them at the tips and tree tops. Then came the stones along the roadside, split open in neat, ugly fractures that didn’t look like time had done it. The air began to change. It carried a faint, lingering sting of burning in the wind. It tasted wrong. Burnt sugar and old thunder. Ionised. The ghost of a storm that hadn't been born from clouds. Her horse blow out a long, unhappy breath through its nose and flatten its ears. Wise animal.

The road thinned as it climbed. What had once been green country turned charred. Tree trunks had blistered and split, sap boiled and hardened into black tears. A stretch of ground ahead looked melted. A cliff sagged into itself like wax too close to a flame. Footprints, if they could be called that, were pressed deep into the softened earth, big and clawed.

Ahead, the ridge opened, and the basin revealed itself like a wound. It looked like a gigant had taken a fist off the land. The ground was gouged open in long, violent arcs. Blackened streaks carved through grass and stone alike, radiating outward like the ribs flayed open. Every stone for fifty yards had been scorched to the same dull, terrible darkness.

And in the center of it...
A shape.
Red.
Massive.
Collapsed.

Anira squinted at it from the ridge. Enormous. Vivid against all that ruin. Her bard's mind, ever the creative, reached for poetry first... fallen, the stars discarded jewel, like... Her bard's mind caught up with her eyes.

She stared at it for a long moment.

The great wyvern lay half-sunken into the earth it had scorched. One wing was thrown wide and ragged. The other folded under its bulk like a broken sail. The long tail had carved a final trench behind it. Its jaws, each the length of two men hung open, and the ground beneath them was black and steaming.

Dead.
Already dead.
Anira sat with this for a moment.

Then she let out a slow breath. "Wonderful," she said pleasantly. "We've arrived in perfect time to witness someone else's triumph. I do love an arrival that removes all pressure of expectations!" She smoothed her doublet. She resettled her hair.

"I shall write a song," she added. "About how close we were."

A branch cracked, a figure stepped out into the open. The hunter was wiping a blade clean. A faint tilt of his head, dark eyes glinting as his gaze landed on the party. A sharp grin on his lips as they fixated on Garrod.

“Ah,” he called, “if it isn’t the El Avestruz himself. He oído que estabas en la región... You took your time.”

Then, softer, almost sympathetic, a hand drifting to his chest in mock regret. “I would have left you something,” he added. He gestured lightly with his blade toward the fallen wyvern, casual as a man indicating a finished drink. "But you know how it is." A small, mournful shrug. "I arrived. She was magnificent. We had our little conversation."

He kissed his fingers.

"It could not wait."
 
Garrod barked a laugh. "Pickle juice huh?" nod with approval. "That'll keep you good and brined,"

"Brined?!" Brinda barked out. "I'm not one of your crabs, One Eye!"

Ilan laughed as their horses clopped along. "Some crab legs wouldn't be so bad right about now," he sounded wanting.

Garrod clicked his tongue. "Con un poco de chile y limon?"

Ilan smirked. "Don't let it get to your head, Garrod,"


"Reyoso..." Garrod grit through his teeth. Scowl like an axe to his grindstone grin. He looked at the burly man with the golden curls pouring over his broad red coated shoulders, and his storm blue eyes.

A boom of laughter that set the heavy executioner's sword at his shoulder to bounce. "Oh, the way you say it," he looked to Anira and let his grin spread wide, like letting her in on the joke. "Con tanto pico," he sighed, full of satisfaction. "It always spurs me on to the next hunt,"

Garrod huffed, and hopped off his horse without a word. Reyoso cocked his brow. While Ilan looked about the canyon walls. The scorched fields.

"Que pasa, Avestruz? Are you sad I beat you to the punch of another hunt?" Reyoso grinned wide, shift his sword on his shoulder, curls along with it.

Garrod drew his heavy hunting knife as he went on with heavy step.

"¡Oye, matador, no te pongas loco!" Reyoso said, tension coiling in his throat, both hands on his sword.

"No chinges!" Garrod barked as he stuck the knife into the soft leather of the wyvern's underbelly. Sliced the flesh clean open with saws and yank. Heat spilled out in a fall of noxious overflow. Bile and blood gushed onto the floor and splashed at Garrod's feet.

Reyoso nearly gagged as he took two stumble steps back. "Aye, que asqueroso." he shuddered.

Ilan let out a sharp whistle. "First one, from the south,"

Garrod just went on grunting, stuck his knife in the dead beast's side with a shunk, and scraped, swiped up and dug through the guts with raw fingers sizzling from the fire-heated innards, still steaming.

"What, which one from the south?" Reyoso called out. "Buzzards?"

Garrod grinned. "Worse," the earth began to rumble beneath their feet. A rhythm set to staccato and played by six limbs. "Gigants," He said, his arm deep in wyvern guts, fingers grasped about a soft, warm, squishy something they tried to work free.

Two large eyes, like pan shaped shells gleamed beneath the unforgiving sun. Compound, and multi faceted, color rippled off their surface like the shroud over water. Two proud antena felt the air like fingers plucking at a harp, whilst giant mandibles chitter chattered their clicking chirps of song.

"What the hell are Gigants?!" Brinda called out, fighting through her hangover as she drew up her own steel.

"Ha! A giant ant?!" Reyoso balked, stepping forward with sword flashing bright against the sun. "Leave it to me, Avestrus, I'll have it solved with a swing of the sword," stepped forward as he watched the creature scuttle down the way. "Asustado por una sola hormiga," he grinned, gripped the handle of his blade, and leapt forth.

"Wait!" Garrod tried.

Whip, whack, slash. The ants head came off clean and landed against the ground with a thud. Its body twitched violent as it went on with its eratic march. The horses bucked, whinnied, and tried to flee. The ant body marched on. Its head, gnashing at whatever it could reach with its last acts of automatic violence.
 
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