“Well…” Ryn wondered where he should start. “Well, to begin with, what’s your name?”

“My name?” The man looked puzzled again. “Why would you want to know my name?”

“You don’t need to know his name, pup, that’s a stupid question.”

Ryn’s fingers twitched. But then he remembered the feel of the cold point of Sagar’s blade pressing into his neck. He remembered the pirate had elemental powers too. He remembered that he wasn’t officially the leader of this group. Yet.

“Vish,” said the bounty hunter.

“Huh?”

“My name. It’s Vish.”

“Oh. Good... And...who hired you to capture Nuthea?”

The man’s grey eyes darted briefly beyond Ryn and back. “Nufea? Nufea is the girl with the yellow hair?”

“That’s right. Nuthea.”

“The Empire, of course.”

“You work for them?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re not a bounty hunter?” said Elrann.

“I am, or, you might say, was, a bounty hunter on a permanent contract with the Morekemian Empire.”

“You kill for them and they supply you with poppy,” said Elrann.

Vish’s silence might as well have been a ‘yes’.

“But you’re not Morekemian,” said Elrann.

“You are right. I am from Aibar. I trained to kill in Aibar.”

“How did you get involved with the Empire, then?” asked Ryn.

“They found me. They gave me poppy. Now I work for them. I hate them, but I work for them. The bigger the bounties I collect, the more poppy they give me.”

“Why?” asked Ryn, confused at that second-last sentence. “If you hate them, why don’t you just leave?” Hating the Empire was something he shared with this man, at least.

Vish dropped his voice. “You have never tasted poppy seed, have you, boy? It is the greatest feeling you could ever imagine. Greater. There is nothing better than it. Nothing. I have tried to leave it, but I cannot. I need the poppy. It makes me happy. I am a slave to it. So I am a slave to the Empire too, since they give me poppy in return for killing.”

Ryn pondered that. He understood a little more of this man’s situation now. How Ryn hated the Empire. All they did was steal, kill, destroy. Enslave. Mother. Father. Hometown. Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr. Stay with Nuthea?

“We will help you escape from your poppy enslavement,” said Ryn, surprising himself as much as anyone.

“We will?” said Elrann.

“Urgggh…” groaned Sagar irritatedly, like his perception of Ryn’s stupidity made him physically sick. “Will you all just shut up?”

“That is a noble idea, Ryn,” said Nuthea. She was standing next to him and Elrann now. She smiled.

Vish just sucked in his black lips and said nothing, and this time it wasn’t clear what his nothing meant.

“So…” Ryn said, “if you work for the Empire, you know what they’re up to. Why did you invade Imfis?”

“Yeah, what gives?!” said Elrann all of a sudden. “We pay our levies! There hasn’t been any Imfisi trouble with the Empire for a long time, ‘cept for the odd little pirate raid.”

“I wouldn’t call them little...” said Sagar from off in the distance.

“Still, nothing that should have led to a full scale invasion! What in the hells is going on here?” Elrann was clearly still rattled by what had happened--as they all were--but as a recent resident of Imfis she seemed to be feeling it most.

Vish shook his head from where he sat atop the chocobo. “I know as much as you do, boy--”

“I’m a girl,” said Elrann. “A woman, actually.”

“So she claims,” said Sagar.

Vish frowned. “But you have short hair and you dress like a boy. And you carry a pistol.”

“Yeah. What of it?”

Vish raised his eyebrows, but then blinked his puzzlement away, apparently accepting this oddity. “Alright, girl, then. But still--I know as much as you, girl. I just collect my bounties. They don’t tell me why or where I’m going. I was flown by airship to Imfis, dropped into the forest and told to hunt for a woman matching her description.” His eyes flicked to Nuthea. “They showed me a drawing, and set me loose. They must have been very keen to get their hands on her, as they had not given me any poppy for a long time.”

“Why does that affect anything?” said Ryn.

“Because the more desperate he is for poppy the harder he will hunt, dingbat,” said Elrann.

“Oh.”

“How did you find me?” said Nuthea. “If they knew where I was, why didn’t they send more soldiers to capture me? Why did they just send you?”

Vish went quiet. He licked his blackened lips. “You will give me lots of poppy when the old man returns?”

“We’ll get him to give you some, yes…” said Ryn carefully. “And then we’ll start helping you to get free from it.”

Vish swallowed. He was quiet a moment longer, but then he said “There are others like me. Not all from Aibar--though some are. Other Shadowfingers.”

“‘Shadowfingers’?” said Sagar. Now he stood up and joined them as well. “What in the poodoo is a ‘Shadowfinger’?”

Vish bit his lip. “I want lots of poppy,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Sagar, taking over the bartering from Ryn. “When the old timer gets back, sure.”

“The Shadowfingers are the Empire’s elite assassins,” said Vish. “People call us bounty hunters because that is what they think we are. And that is true, in a way. But really we are all poppy slaves--and slaves to the Empire because of that. The Emperor finds the most dangerous killers in Mid, gets us hooked on poppy, and then uses us to carry out his wishes. Together, we make up the Emperor’s Hand. It wasn’t just me they dropped into Imfis, but other Shadowfingers as well. Maybe about three of us.” He looked at Nuthea. “They must have known the general area you were in, but not exactly where. I stole this chocobo for transportation and just happened to chance upon you in the forest. I was lucky, I suppose. Or not, as the case may be,” he added, eyeing Elrann’s pistol. “I was doing fine until you shot me with that infernal contraption. Where did you acquire such a device, anyway?”

“In Farr,” said Elrann, and grinned.

“Ah yes. Some of the Farric Shadowfingers have them as well.” Vish nodded knowingly.

A distant noise like a dog barking, only deeper and angrier, came from somewhere very far away. Everyone looked round in the direction it had come from, the direction from which they had walked, but there was nothing to be seen, only the interwoven eaves of the trees.

“What was that?” said Ryn.

“Nothing,” said Sagar. “A stray dog or something. So you’re one of these ‘Shadowfingers’ then,” he said, turning back to Vish to resume their interrogation. “One of the Morekemian Emperor’s assassins. If that’s true, you must know why he has invaded Imfis.”

“You don’t need to ask him,” piped up Nuthea. “We already know why the Emperor has invaded Imfis.”

“Well why don’t you ask him if he knows what you think you know about why they’ve invaded?”

“I…” Nuthea hesitated. “I’m not sure we should talk to him about that. I’m not sure that we can trust him.” Ryn understood that. The bounty hunter had almost killed her, after all...

“Look, bounty hunter,” said Sagar, disregarding her, “the princess here thinks that the Emperor has invaded Imfis because he’s found out about some ancient relics called the ‘Primeval Jewels’ and he’s trying to get his hands on them.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Vish said at once. He looked completely blank. “I’ve never heard of any ‘Primeval Jewels’ before.”

“He’s lying,” said Elrann.

“Think what you will,” said Vish. “I have no reason to lie to any of you. I haven’t the faintest idea why the Empire has invaded this pitiful country. They don’t tell me what they’re doing--they just drop me into places and point me in the direction of my target so I can claim my poppy. I just want my poppy. In fact, it’s in my interests to tell you the truth.”

“Do you know who General Vorr is?” Ryn jumped in all of a sudden.

Vish was silent a moment. “Yes,” he said.

Ryn’s pulse quickened. “What can you tell me about him?”

“You don’t want to know about him,” Vish said slowly. “You don’t want anything to do with him. He is a brutal, cruel, highly dangerous Imperial officer. That is as much as you should want to know.”

“What’s his involvement in the invasion?”

“He has been tasked with leading the invasion of Imfis by the Emperor; I know that much.”

“How do you know that much if they don’t tell you anything?”

“Vorr is running the whole operation. He personally gave me my orders to hunt and capture or kill your yellow-haired girl himself.”

“Nuthea.”

“Nufea.”

“What’s he planning next?”

Vish sighed; not a sigh of pleasure this time like when he had been in the poppy trance, but a deeper, coarser sigh of exasperation. “That I cannot tell you. He merely issued me with my target. I was to kill or capture her, then report back with evidence--”

“Evidence?” interrupted Sagar.

“You know. Evidence that I’d completed the job. The severed head of the target will usually do, for example.”

Nuthea put a hand over her mouth.

“I was to report back with evidence,” continued Vish, “receive my poppy, and then await my next target. I don’t know anything about why I am given my targets, why the Empire are doing what they’re doing, or what they’re going to do next. I find it is best not to think about any of those things. All I am interested in is my poppy.”

Ryn’s pulse slowed again, and he sighed now as well. Whatever the others thought, he judged that this man was probably telling the truth, and that he really didn’t know anything more about Vorr’s plans or whereabouts. It made sense. He was just a sort of slave who followed orders. Although...maybe if Ryn pressed him further the man might be able to give him some hint as to Vorr’s plans and where Ryn might be able to find him next, and perhaps even how Ryn might most easily be able to kill him...

A question formed on his lips. “What else can you tell me about Gen--”

“Quick!”

Their heads snapped round. Someone had called out from somewhere in the forest, just on the edge of hearing.

There was another sound like the deep bark they had heard earlier, only louder and closer this time. There it was again. And again.

Rustling. Something moving through the undergrowth.

And then the old man healer Cid appeared, a way off still, hurtling through the trees towards them at full gallop on the back of a yellow chocobo. Where he clasped the reins he also held a rope attached to another chocobo that galloped along behind him.

“Quick, get on, get on!” he yelled as he approached them. His face was puffy and red and he spoke between gasping for breath. “We’ve got to go, now! They’re coming! They caught me stealing the chocobos from the stable and now they’re coming!”

“Who’s coming?” Ryn was the first to say as he scrambled around in a panic, trying to work out which chocobo to mount.

The barking noise sounded again, closer still; horribly, bone-chillingly close.

“The Imperials, of course!” yelled Cid urgently. “But they’re bringing something with them! Some kind of beast!”

From between the trees behind him, where Cid had been only moments ago, several black-armoured Imperial soldiers mounted on chocobos appeared.

And with them, twice their height and more than four times their width, was some sort of bone-white, dog-like, black-eyed, many-toothed, barking monster.