Sand got into everything. Into the joints of his black and gold armor, into his bluzel eyes, in his already sand-soaked mouth. Everything. What was worse is that it was hot. Hot sand, hot air, hot armor. “It breathes well,” one of the other guards had told Tyr, but that didn’t mean much to someone not used to such extreme temperatures. Hunting out here for just a few hours was harder than doing it for a whole day back home. Part of it, he kept reminding himself, had to be that his chakra was still weak. This meant that the Cool Drinks weren’t nearly as effective, and so Tyr had to take twice as many as anyone else to keep half as comfortable.

“Keep at it, Blank,” Orion called back with a laugh. “It’s only a desert. The Cephalos can’t hide forever!”

“I thought that was the whole reason we were out here,” Tyr said. “Caravans getting attacked by hidden Cephalos and all.”

“Sarcasm, Tyr. Look it up.”

That really should have been more obvious. At least there was rhythm and a pattern to what they were doing. Hunting was about methodical searches, not random ones. It was about knowing a wyvern, a pelagus, or even a crustacean well enough to know their habits. This was where local hunters like Orion came in handy, because for Tyr to try and guess what habits a Cephalos would have from stories would’ve been harder than surviving the desert heat without a Cool Drink. Not that hunters hadn’t done it before, and wouldn’t do it again, but it was a real timesaver to have Orion there instead of luck. Luck had never really been on his side, after all.

They arrived at the last known location of the sand sharks, the site of the last attack, and found that they hadn’t gotten far at all. Three Cephalos circled the camp while a fourth tore at the carcass of the Aptonoth which had been used to pull the cart. Tyr briefly wondered if this was what had happened to the Aptonoth that had been hauling his own cart.

The way Orion charged at the beasts, his water-edged dual blades in hand, Tyr would’ve never classified him as a captain of the city guard. No grace, no fashion, but he had speed and a fighting style that was highly effective.

Using his dual blades like climbing picks, he stabbed through armor and scales until he was atop whatever he was fighting, and then he’d just stab repeatedly. Most hunters needed to launch themselves into the air and hope for a good opening in order to mount a monster, but not Orion. His blades had a special elongated serration just so he could keep his grip, and not even the violent thrashings of the Cephalos could whip him off. In fact, before Tyr could catch up to his first friend in the guard, one of the four was already dead. The other three were nowhere to be seen though.

“Did they run?” Tyr asked aloud. Cephalos didn’t often run, that much he’d read in the notes, but they had a trick. What was it?

“Below you!” Orion called back, and Tyr barely had time to roll before a Cephalos emerged from beneath the sands. He turned to draw his sword and a blast of sand hit him square in the chest, sending him flipping backwards.

Tyr regained his footing fast-enough to give him a moment to watch. The Cephalos circled the area, but kept their fins above the sand until just before a strike. Tremorsense. That was the word that someone had used to describe how they knew when to attack, and that was also how to stop them. Waiting until the sand shark dove, Tyr crushed a small ball in his hand and tossed it forward. “Sonic!” he shouted as he covered his ears. The blast of sound that the bug inside shrieked out as it died was loud-enough to disrupt the beast’s ability to sonically shift sand, and it had no choice but to fling itself out of the earth. Then, the Nifilan Edge cut into its soft underside as it flopped to regain composure.

Slash after slash, stab after stab, the beast stood little chance after being thrown so far off its game. Blood trickled down into the sand, and Tyr was almost too distracted by the spontaneity of the death to remember that there were others. He rolled just as a blast of sand struck his first kill, and reached for another Sonic Bomb. With a smirk, he tossed it behind himself and waited until he heard the thud of the Cephalos on the sands. Then, it was just a matter of repeating the slaughter. Midway into his second swing, however, another blast knocked both Orion and Tyr from the fight. When they recovered, a giant brown fin, easily twice the size of the Cephalos’, swept between them before circling out. The more worrying part was the matching fin that joined it.

“Well… shit,” Orion said, taking a moment to sharpen his blades.

“What is that thing?”

“Cephadrome. Big ones. It’s gonna be a real hassle since we’re just trying to take down the young.”

“What, you don’t think one of them is the leader?”

“What I think,” Orion said, watching the trio of fins cutting through the sand, “Is that we weren’t contracted for anything but Cephalos, and so the Dromes need to be left alone.”

“What a load of dung.” Tyr gripped his final Sonic Bomb and ran straight for the incoming group. Orion, of course, was faster, even with his weapons drawn, and when they both tossed their bombs at the same time there was a moment of frustration. With all four of the wyverns flopping about in the sand, the two hunters naturally split up.

Since neither could be quite as quick while dodging tail swipes, sand blasts, and the occasional hip check, the battle seemed as though it would never subside. Tyr swung his blade into and through his wyvern’s legs, while Orion stuck to his tried and true method of ripping holes into the beast’s neck.

Blood spattered everything. Their polished black armor glinted darkly every time the shadows of their opponents passed and the sun struck them once more. In the sand, tiny puddles of crimson mud slowed any attempt to move. The heat baked the blood, increasing the potency of the noxious smell. When Orion’s target finally fell on its side, he leapt off the wyvern and right into a new blast of sand.

More had been summoned.

“Tyr!” he called. “We’ve got trouble!”

Half a dozen more fins had appeared in the sands, two already close enough to be the trouble, and the others not far off from becoming so.

“Guess so. What’s the plan?” Tyr asked as he rolled out to a safer distance.

“The plan is we run and come back with a bigger team.” Orion shouted as he sprinted away, checking over his shoulder as he did. As he checked the second time, Tyr had stopped and was facing the gang of piscine wyverns who were still none too happy with them. “What the Deviljho is your problem recruit?!”

“Never abandoned a hunt before. Not about to start now.” Despite the heat, despite even the weight of his armor, Tyr stood tall, one hand poised at the hilt of his katana while the Cephadromes and their goons took to the sands.

Orion stopped. “By the Fata, he can’t be serious.” But, even as he said it, Orion knew that his nearly chakra-free companion wasn’t about to budge. “When this is over,” he called out as he ran back to the fight. “I am going to kill you, whether you’re dead or not.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tyr said with a surprising chuckle. “Just make certain you don’t climb on top of me to do it. I’d hate for the city to get the wrong impression.” There was a flicker around his blade, a glow that Orion knew all too well. “You ready, Captain?”

“No, but when has that ever stopped me?” The blood on his armor evaporated into nothing more than stains as a fiery red aura surrounded his body. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Never have,” Tyr said. “But when has that ever stopped me?”

Back across the sands, Oliarta sighed as she waited in the Guild Hall. Tyr and Orion had been gone for nearly three hours on what should’ve been a twenty-minute quest. An hour with travel time. If she hadn’t been in the middle of wooing a particularly attractive sergeant at the time they accepted the quest, she’d have been out there with them and maybe they’d be back by now. “Boys are so useless sometimes.”

“Far be it from me to disagree,” the bartender said as he poured her another drink.

“They are. Always going off on quests and junks and hunts and just dicking around instead of getting things done. I mean they were Cephalos for crying out… out… at all.” Perhaps sixteen drinks was enough, but what did it even matter after about eight? The Guild Halls and taverns had all been built for keeping drunks inside. Anyone who went through a doorway in or out of the hall would have their chakra cleansed of impurities. It worked for a lot more than just alcohol, and it was one of the best reasons to report back to the Guild after every hunt. It was still a mystery how the Guild did it, how they did most of what they did, but it worked and that was all that mattered. “They’re just dumb.”

“Glad to know that’s how you think of us,” Orion said as he limped inside, holding up the nearly unconscious Tyr who barely stumbled in with him. Guildies, nearly a dozen by Oliarta’s drunken count, rushed to get the four settled down somewhere while a healer was called from the back. The guardswoman got to her feet and nearly tripped her way to the others. One foot, then the other foot, she reminded herself.

“What tooked you?” she accused the second Orion. Had there always been two Orions?

“Your friend here got it in his head that,” he winced as the medic lifted up an arm to check for breaks; sand mixed with blood fell out onto the floor. “That taking down half a dozen Cephalos at once was no big deal.”

“Iss snot.”

“It is when there’s a Cephadrome or two with them.”

“Thas stupid. You’re stupid.”

“Yeah, but we got quite the haul to show for it.” Orion handed the nearest Guildie the hunting slip. “Done and done, three times over. And, soldier, I want you to sober up before you say another word. Had enough trouble today.”

Oliarta saluted. She didn’t know how not to when given an order. As she stumbled out the front door her head cleared, and the full impact of her comrades’ state hit her. Rushing back in, she made her way to Tyr and reared a hand back to give him a wallop upside the head, but he was fast asleep. “He nearly got you killed,” she explained to Orion, even though she didn’t need to. “Why’d you let him do that?”

“I had to so he wouldn’t get himself killed.” There was a look in Orion’s eyes that Oliarta hadn’t ever seen before. It wasn’t the stare of admiration he had for Commander Clay Claw, or the look he gave senior Guild officials when they came for inspections, or even the leer he saved for a girl that he was trying to impress with a tale of his exaggerated exploits. It was all of them, and none of them at once.

“What is it?” she asked.

“He’s one hell of a hunter.”

“You say that about everyone.”

“I should probably stop that then.”

They both stared at Tyr for a while longer, and it was hard for either to believe that the dark-haired hunter, caked in blood and sand from a quest that most would’ve abandoned or needed much better equipment to complete, could really have done what he did with an additional handicap. It was difficult to think what kind of hunter he was before being broken, and what sort of power it must have taken to shatter a man capable of hunting on his level. And it was unimaginable, inconceivable, that that smile he wore on his lips was masking nightmares they wouldn’t understand.