Twenty gold coins or a hundred provincial credits. That was what they’d pay her to kill something for them. It wasn’t a bad deal. After all, she’d killed for less on more than a few occasions, and she needed the money, since she was broke. Again.

Now, how did that happen? Sadea couldn’t quite figure it out. Had it been the nights of drinking at the Pink Orchid Brothel? Or jeweled bracelets and gold earrings? Or silk dresses? Or, most realistically, the interest from her previous debts?

Yes, definitely the latter, seeing as how she had not a speck of jewelry on her, and she was definitely not wearing a silk dress.

Instead, she was clad in a worn red bodyglove, a leather utility kilt, and battered riding boots. A green cotton scarf inlaid with copper embroidery covered her shoulders. All else she owned was in her saddlebags, which wasn’t a lot. Oh, plus her war-staff and her stabilization gauntlets, the former clipped into a saddle slot by her right knee and the latter tucked into the pockets of her kilt.

Sadea ran her hands through her mop of strawberry-hair, attempting to straighten it out, at least a bit. Its dark roots were beginning to show, and it wouldn’t be long before she’d had to recolor her hair once more. That meant more money that wouldn’t go toward drinking. Or jewels. Or her debts. She sighed.

Since she hadn’t bothered to do so the night before, she pulled out the bounty letter from the open top of her bodyglove, unfolded it, and began to read. Yes, she wasn’t supposed to rip it off the town hall’s bulletin board, but she’d be damned if someone else beat her to this bounty.

Eventually, her battered mind, still hung-over from an entire bottle of whiskey, beat the letter’s words into sullen comprehensibility, and she frowned at their vagueness.

Manufactory #5712-P1k34 has been attacked. Neutralize the threat. Payment on confirmation. 20 Hegemonic gold OR 100 credits, valid only in Province #CEN-91351.

“Well, that’s useless,” she muttered. “Don’t even know what I’m supposed to kill.”

Not like that was anything new. It wouldn’t be the first time she walked blind into a warzone, and it wouldn’t be the first time she didn’t know what she would be killing until she was killing it.

And she was really good at killing things.

Her reanimated horse came to a jarring stop, causing her to fumble with the bounty letter. A morning breeze plucked it from her grasp and spiraled it away into oblivion.

“Eh.” Sadea adjusted the copper knobs jutting from her horse’s skull, clearing the manufactory’s location from its psychic space, and dismounted. She stroked its cold, leathery neck. “Looks like we’re here. Good job, Pieter. Good boy.”

Its only response was to stare glassily into emptiness, as always. Sadea cracked her knuckles and tugged on her stabilization gauntlets. Then she unhitched her war-staff and flicked a piece of lint off its psi-crystal crescent head.

“Alright, let’s see what we have here,” she muttered, crouching over the half-eaten human corpse sprawled before her horse’s hooves. It was missing most of its innards, and its limbs had been chewed off. There wasn’t any obvious trail of blood, so the victim had been pounced on and taken apart on this very spot. The shattered bones jutting from the folds of rent flesh spoke of the killer’s great strength and weight.

“Whatever did this doesn’t seem humanoid.” Sadea cast her gaze around and immediately confirmed her suspicions. The mossy dirt around the corpse was ridden with imprints from what could only be massive, clawed paws. The spacing implied a quadruped, some kind of large, oversized beast, perhaps feline, if not for the fact that there were hoof prints mixed in as well, in a manner that suggested clawed forelimbs and hoofed rear limbs.

“Interesting.” Sadea opened her soul and heightened its connection to the Ethereal Tides. The air around her began crackling with latent electricity and a sheen of psychic frost started to form down the length of her war-staff.

Mage-sight had never been her strong suit. In fact, she was probably worse at it than every sorcerer she’d ever met, but even so, it was enough for her to perceive the quivering trauma the immaterial had left on the material at this location. Something unnatural had been here, something infused with the wild energies of the Ethereal Tides.

“Hope it isn’t a demon. I hate demons.” Sadea glanced at the corpse’s skull. It had been crushed, and its spilled contents had been lapped greedily by something with a very long tongue, but the bone fragmentation patterns suggested that whatever had bitten into it had blunt, grinding teeth, not unlike those of cattle or sheep. This didn’t fit well with the fact that sharp fangs had opened the victim’s belly.

“More than one mouth… or one head.” Sadea swept her gaze across the immediate vicinity once more. The cadaver she’d been examining wasn’t the only pile of carrion around. A swift count unveiled a dozen heaps of rotting flesh, shattered bone, and spilled viscera, all scattered around the opening of a steel-wire fence, within the bounds of which a time-pitted permacrete structure squatted, all grey blocks and black chimneys.

It wasn’t difficult to piece together what happened. The scraps of clothes remaining on the corpses were obviously work coveralls. When the manufactory was attacked, some of the workers tried to flee, but they didn’t get far. A monster had torn them apart, and then headed into the building, leaving a psychic trail that reeked of malevolence. Whatever it was, it hadn’t just been hungry. It was also hateful and sadistic.

“Why couldn’t it be some dashing bandit lord instead of yet another monster?” she grumbled, picking her way past the piles of rotting flesh. “Maybe with one of those sweeping moustaches, tight body, and a nice sword, if you know what I mean…”

Still, at least one of the workers had made it past the beast. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been a bounty letter at all.

Sadea sighed as she looked down at the corpse closest to the opening in the wire fence. The eyeless face, missing its lower jaw, stared mutely back at her. “Yeah, yeah. I know, I know. Don’t worry. I’ll kill whatever did this to you.”

Lightning danced across her fingers, streamed from her eyes, and crackled down her cheeks. The crescent head of her war-staff blazed with cobalt radiance. She strode to the front door of the manufactory, twin planes of plate steel hanging ajar on squeaking hinges. Lamplight reached weakly from the depths of the building.

“Right. Time to get paid.” Grinning, Sadea stepped within.