Edmon cursed the day he’d let his husband Alfron sweet talk him into joining his next caravan run to Aethel from Dontos.

The Desolate Wastes were not only as much of an abomination as everyone said they were, they were even worse. Outside of the wagons, the air stung to breathe. After a few inhales his mouth and nose burned. People had to wear specially crafted masks if they wanted to walk outside and even then, they only lasted for about an hour or two.

That wasn’t to mention the inconsistent weather—blazing hot for a few hours then freezing cold the next— or the horrible terrain. He’d heard that in Romada they called the Desolate Wastes the “Wasted Seas” which made no sense to him. Apparently, ‘sea’ was an old fashioned word from ancient history for a huge body of water larger than lakes with waves taller than hills.

But they called it that because the Wastes moved. Cliffs would rise when the land had been flat days or weeks ago, pebbles would become gravel then rocks then boulders in a day or two. Caves would form or the ground would splinter then fracture into sand after a few people walked over the same stretch of land or even if two wagons drove in the same spot.

That wasn’t even the worst part of all this.

Not the weather, the scorching air, the freakish terrain, but the fucking wasteborn.

Edmon roared as he kicked out at the strange scaled beast with patches of fur that Alfron had just bashed with his carpenter’s mallet. It skittered away in a disturbing motion with far too many legs as its quadruple jaws split open to reveal rows of jagged teeth with a tongue as long as a grown man’s leg.

He glared at it as he drew even harder on his failing [Cook] archetype until he could imagine the bestial wasteborn in front of him as a mass of meat ready to be grilled. It pounced for him as its four jaws opened wide enough to swallow him whole.

“Bake!” Edmon shouted as he wrangled every ounce of power he could from the skill he’d developed over two decades of cooking. Smoke burst from its mouth as it thrashed on the ground that grew spikes of stone that caught and tore against its flanks.

Steam rose from its boiling blood that dripped from cracks in its scales or from the gashes the Wastes had inflicted on it.

Edmon furrowed his brow as he shoved at his bake skill even harder. Past the point of a perfect well-done steak to a charbroiled mess.

The wasteborn screamed as yellow light streamed from its exposed muscles, then a flash of blue from his [Cook] archetype flared as they combined into a green blaze of light and heat.

It stopped moving.

“What the fuck was that?” Edmon turned to glare at his husband that’d gone on these trips three times now and had neglected to mention how fucking awful it was.

“That was a starwolf.” Alfron shrugged as he swung his mallet in an experimentive motion then nodded in satisfaction before turning to their wagon that had been broken into by the beast. “Time to get back to work.”

Green light flowed from Alfron into the shattered, twisted boards of their wagon as he forced them to smooth and straighten back out.

Edmon sighed, muttered to himself, then stooped down so he could go to work butchering the starwolf at his feet. It wouldn’t do to have any food go to waste, especially since he was getting pretty good at developing his butchering skills.