Part 1 of the Huntress Storyline
“This is for you, Huntress.” A young halfling boy stopped her in the street, hand reaching out towards her, parchment clenched in his fist. Xori took the crinkled envelope from the boy, replaced it with a copper.
Pandor was good-natured, a pure heart. Xori hadn’t been in town for very long, but she’d seen enough to know that if Pandor suffered anything, it was a little too much enthusiasm, even for a child his age. Some of the other children she’d seen around were at the age where trickery and games were more the norm, but Pandor had no well to hold even the slightest bit of deceit or dishonesty in him. She could see it in his eyes, reflecting back parts of his soul. He’d been the only person in town to greet her when she first arrived, where others had kept their distance, sneaking glances under lowered brows, voices always cautious and questioning. He said he liked her tail. Even with the claw marks.
The envelope had been addressed to her—her name scrawled slanted and skewed, but still identifiably hers all the same.
Renowned huntress, Xori,
Tales of your exploits and current residence in my village have reached my ears. I have great need for your services as a hunter and request an audience with you this evening. Please visit my manor on the hill at sunset.
Sincerely,
Tedrick Rawlin
Xori sat and stared at the letter for a while, tail curling around her ankles, trying to gauge all she could from what little was there. She’d been in Rawlinsberg for a fortnight, intent on just passing through but ever on the lookout for her next lead on coin. Though the last name struck familiar with the village, she’d never heard of this Tedrick Rawlin before. There’d been no real mention of him around the mess hall, nor had she overheard anything in town while she was out and about.
The letter offered no other details, no explanation, and yet she could feel the pressing need carved into the tone.
“Where did you get this from, Pan?”
Pandor rolled the copper between his fingers. “Dunno. A man gave it to me.”
“What man?”
“Don’t know. Looked like any other man to me. I saw him when I was trying to catch that cat that’s been scrounging around for food behind the mess hall, next to the front gate. He gave it to me, and then he left.”
Xori shook her head. Pure-hearted, and maybe too trusting.
“What does it say?” Pandor asked, falling in step with her as Xori made her way back to the inn. She had liked this town, perhaps too much. She found herself walking a little slower than usual on her way to collect her things to move on again.
“It says that you deserve another copper for being a good boy and not reading letters not addressed to you,” Xori smiled, pocketing the letter and reaching back into her coin purse. If he had read the letter, he’d want to come with her. She knew that much.
“I don’t think it really said that,” Pandor mused, taking another copper and hitting it against the first one. He stopped for a moment and Xori watched as he listened to it clang, weighed the vibrations against his fingers, did it again.
“Maybe not, but you’ll never know.”
The door to the inn was already open, the innkeeper’s wife sweeping dirt from the floorboards inside out onto the porch. Xori stopped and waited to give her the chance to finish, so she didn’t track any more dirt inside. She always finds it to be a good practice to leave things just as clean as she found it.
Pandor caught her eyes lingering on the inn, a frown falling across his checks. “Are you leaving, Huntress? Is that what the letter said?”
Xori nodded without meeting his eye. It was a slight nod, almost indiscernible, but she knew he would catch it with the big, curious gaze of his.
“But you haven’t even told me all your stories yet!”
“Good boys don’t pout, Pandor. I told you I’d be leaving sooner or later.”
Pandor had been so excited to see a traveler come through town. When Xori had first arrived, he’d nearly ran into her in his rush to learn more about her. She’d told him once, in gentler terms, that she traveled to where the monsters were—the real monsters, not the ones that people gave that name to just because they look different from them. An important distinction. Pandor and the other kids took that to mean she was some sort of adventuring hero, traveling from place to place to vanquish things that would want to hurt them, keeping them safe.
The more experienced denizens who gathered to listen to her tails could probably see the greater truth to it. There’s a subtle but important difference between wanting to protect the innocent and taking up the work for other reasons. Eradicating evil was on the agenda, but it was more of a means than an end. The end was vindication. Xori was more self-serving than Pandor would ever realize. Her tales weren’t for guts or glory, though told through the right lens it may seem that way. Vengeance was her companion, her driving force, and every cut she made with a weapon, every drop of blood spilled wasn’t meant as a heroic act, but a spiteful one.
But Pandor and the other children would hang on her every word. And people weren’t often so keen on letting bad things into where they sleep, where they eat. They didn’t need to know the particulars of her purpose, Pandor especially. She could at least spare him that.
“One more story before you go, at least. Please?”
The innkeeper’s wife caught Xori’s eye, the slightest of smiles setting across her face. Maybe she’d stayed too long in this town, but this was the first place where people—not many, but the good-intentioned ones—looked her in the eye. The tail and horns were one thing to get past, the dark midnight hue of her skin another. But her eyes…she’d lost all color there, white portals staring in all directions at once. The effects of magic. Her eyesight had never been better, but most people found it too uncomfortable to look back at her properly. There’s no point in looking through a window if you can’t see what’s on the other side.
“Tell you what, Pandor. You get to be the storyteller tonight,” Xori said, nudging him back out onto the street. Go tell your friends to all gather in the mess around supper, and you can tell a story this time. Something to make everyone remember you by.”
His eyes lit up. “And you’ll be there?”
She nodded resolutely, determined to her lie, even such small one. The letter had said to meet at sunset, but she’d leave much before that, take her time, see what she was getting into.
Xori left Pandor at the door, took the stairs two at a time to get up to her room. There, she packed what little she had in belongings into her canvas pack and rolled up her bedroll She stuffed a couple of daggers into sheaths she had sewn into her bracers, fastened those to her wrists. The rest of her leather armor nearly molded to her skin. Along her waist, she’d fastened two whips, one on either side. It’d been days since she felt the familiar weight at her hips. She felt more balanced this way. Even though she’d taken care to clean all her gear when she’d taken it off, it still smelled of all the times she’d camped under the stars, sweat and dirt seeped in from all the miles collected by her hooves.
Looking in the mirror one last time, she could see just how her adventures had aged her. This armor was the closest thing she had to a true home. Once a light brown hide, now it had a dull red sheen.
Xori wasn’t sure what to expect from this Tedrick Rawlin next. Maybe he did truly need her help. Maybe it was a ploy to get the weathered Tiefling out of his town. The only thing she knew for certain now was that she’d overstayed her welcome here. People had heard of her name, felt bold enough to summon her on request. She wasn’t here to help, she was here to hunt. Maybe this Tedrick Rawlin would lead her to a worthy prey, but a reputation as a hunter for hire was a means to collect more coin, and fulfill her real mission in time.
The mirrored Xori stared back at her, eyes just as empty and unforgiving. The scars on her face faded, effects of all the magic and medicine. The ones hidden under her armor, her plainclothes—those were kept, memories etched into her skin to remind her of her purpose.
She remembered every jagged tear, the sound of flesh being ripped away from bone. She remembered every tooth puncture, holes pierced through muscle and sinew. She can still taste every bubbling concoction she was given—“Try not to let it rest on your tongue, pay no mind to the burning in the back of your throat.” There was no mention of the sandpaper feeling scraping away at her skin, the endless burn of exposed nerve endings set aflame with every breath. The lazy, broken tilt of her left horn would never again quite match the tight spiral of the right.
It took the blink of an eye for the lycan bastard to bite and claw her life apart, and far, far longer for her to get any semblance of it back. Once she did, there were two things Xori knew to be absolutely, undeniably true: It takes a monster to fight monsters, and she had nothing else left to lose. After every ounce of the mutt was vanished from her cells, she swore whatever was left of her life to making sure that abuse of such dark power didn’t go unchecked.
