Tyr and Adaline spent every moment of the next few days together. Adaline insisted that she wasn’t going to let him run away again, and Tyr didn’t mind sharing a bed during the cold of the desert nights. Meanwhile, Hammer Maiden and Guard of Death had gone out hunting, and returned just as the sand started to violently whirl around the city.

“What do you suppose is going on?” Hammer Maiden asked Guard of Death as they stepped off the boat, a Lagia Sapphire in her hand.

“Don’t know,” he replied. “But it’s big.” The Guild Outpost was much more crowded than usual, filled with anxious chatter and nervous hunters.

The Guildie in charge, dressed in official black, addressed the crowd. “Everyone! Everyone, please, calm down! We need to organize if this threat is going to be handled efficiently.” While most of the crowd did quiet, there were still a few voices which would not be silenced.

“How you expect to efficiently handle a Jhen Mohran?”

“It has been done before,” the Guildie reminded them. “It will be done again.”

“Last time we had Gunhammer Azusa! Who’s supposed to lead the team this time?”

“I will,” Kean replied as he made his way through the crowd. “It’s my city and I’ll defend it like I did when Azusa was here.” He stopped at the quest board, ripping the giant posting off only to hold it higher. “Are there any amongst you that will answer the call of your city?”

Plenty of silence answered him, silence buried beneath flying sands.

“Must I fight this threat alone?” Although no one in the city could say that they wanted him to go alone, there were hardly any that thought they had the skill to fight something like the Jhen and live. And fewer who were allowed to go. Princes came and went, but this was the only life they had to live.

Kean had never been so alone. He stood at the desk with no support in the entire city, not even from those hunters he would’ve considered the bravest. But just as he began to despair, two men stepped forward. One was wearing shining Ingot armor, dulled by the abundance of swirling sand, and the other was dressed in sleek black, a pair of serrated daggers at his side. “Climbing Captain, wasn’t it? Won’t it be your duty to protect the princess when she travels back home?

“That’s why I don’t plan on dying, Prince of Loc Lac.” Orion gave the man a grin he wasn’t feeling as he signed his name to the sheet, followed shortly by Keyns.

“And I don’t believe we’ve had the chance to meet,” Kean said, holding out his hand to the young hunter.

“Oh, right, umm,” Keyns began before he swallowed hard. “I’m pleased to finally meet you, Prince of Loc Lac. I’m the Tail Guy”

“Welcome aboard, Tail Guy. It’s a pleasure to have you with us. Is there anyone else?”

Hammer Maiden and Guard of Death approached Orion, one of them displeased and the other intrigued. “I thought we were disbarred from such a hunt,” Hammer Maiden said.

“You are,” Orion replied firmly. “I never said I was.”

“Your double standards do not serve you well, Captain.”

“But my sergeants do and will. Enjoy your time off, both of you. That is an order.”

“Who’s to say we would not enjoy this quest?”

“Do you know what a Jhen Mohran is, Hammer Maiden? Guard of Death?” Their looks did not betray their ignorance, but their muteness did.

“It’s a dragon with tusks the size of a Diablos and a mouth big enough to swallow a team of hunters whole. If it smashes into the ship while you’re on it, you’d better hope you weren’t beneath anything or they’d be trying to peel you off the deck for a week. And if that wasn’t bad enough,” he paused, making certain they understood the gravity of each word. “If you don’t know how to listen to an order when it’s given to you, it will reach this city, thousands of people will die, and so will you.”

Guard of Death and Hammer Maiden had both been given lectures before, even been yelled at, but Orion didn’t do so much as raise his voice. He was firm, quiet, and if words could be blades then his were sharper and hit harder than any greatsword. Hammer Maiden actually flushed with embarrassment, and Guard of Death grunted in his shame. “So both of you can get out of my sight and enjoy your damned vacation.”

“Captain,” Kean shouted, grabbing Orion’s attention. “Would any of your guards like to come along? It seems there are no brave hunters left in my city.”

“I just finished telling them not to come,” Orion shouted back. “They are Fahrenn’s Guards, not Loc Lac’s.”

“They will not see Fahrenn again if the Jhen isn’t repelled.”

He had a point, but when Orion turned to look back at his sergeants, they were conveniently gone. He sighed, going over the list of people remaining in his group that he hadn’t scared into submission, or who wouldn’t have psyched themselves out. “Someone get me Blank Blade!” he hollered.

As if on cue, Tyr stepped out of the crowd, his arm wrapped around Orion’s charge. She had gone back her natural blue hair, apparently, and had her face pressed against Tyr’s chest to shield her eyes from the dust. There was some small piece of jewelry around her neck that looked new. At least Tyr still had his katana on his back so that he could protect her, even if he had removed his armor. “You willing to save the city, Blank?”

“Are you sure I’m the right person to ask? I can’t even fully channel my chakra still.”

“Blank Blade,” Kean said. “The Jhen wouldn’t notice even if you could.”

The ship rocked and lurched as they traveled through the storm towards its eye where the Jhen Mohran would be waiting for them. Orion’s stomach churned with the ship, but he was doing an incredible job with keeping his lunch in his stomach. “Not natural…” he mumbled. “This whole damn thing.”

“Cheer up, Captain!” Keyns clapped him on the shoulder. “You got Blank and the Prince here. They’re so good we might not even get a chance if they don’t slow down, you know?”

“If the… hrrk… Jhen doesn’t kill us… you’re… first on my list.” Orion stumbled further below deck, where he could hopefully recover in the darkness. Keyns, meanwhile, went to check on Kean and Tyr. He found them in the forward cabin, where both sat quietly a few feet from each other, not making eye contact.

“You two getting psyched up for the fight or something?”

“Something, yeah,” Tyr said. “Is anything wrong?”

“Just trying to figure out how you guys do it is all.”

“Do what, precisely?” Kean asked.

“How you guys are so good at hunting. I mean, everyone’s heard the stories about you, Prince of Loc Lac. You’re incredible. And then I saw with my own two eyes how awesome Blank was when we took down that Los.”

“You killed a Rathalos, Blank Blade? I am impressed that you could do so at your level. How many were with you?”

“Just me,” Keyns answered before he realized he had just spoken over Tyr. “But he made the quest a lot easier than I expected.”

“You must have done an incredible amount of work then,” Kean replied. “I understand that Blank Blade has lost his ability to channel his chakra.”

“He what?!” Keyns exclaimed. “And yet you still… by the Fata!”

Tyr shook his head. “There’s no need to get excited. A hunt isn’t about channeling chakra and-“

“That’s why you looked so glum and stuff, right? You’ve got like a... a no spirit thing because you can’t channel?” He was getting more excited the more he spoke. “But… you’re still so good! So, you were probably some sort of Legend before whatever happened, right? Are you the Sword Saint? I hear you scared a Lao away just by looking at it.”

“I’m not the Sword Saint,” Tyr replied with a shake of his head. “Although I think I met him once.”

“And he taught you all your cool moves, right?”

“No,” Tyr could’ve smiled, but it wasn’t a memory that made him happy. “He told me ‘It is not the shaking of hands or the racing of hearts, but the dark of mind you must conquer. The earth shakes at every roar, the winds race beneath beating wings, but darkness only blinds those who close their eyes.”

“Man… I have no idea what that means, but I’m certain that it’s something really deep.”

“It sounds like a very clever way of saying nothing at all,” Kean said.

No one responded to that. Silence was hardly an issue with the hurricane winds and the sound of sand pelting their boat at every instant of every hour. Still, Keyns wasn’t certain how to take Kean’s comment, and Tyr didn’t feel like commenting on it. Luckily for both of them, the storm had just stopped.

“To arms!” Kean called, rushing for the supplies the moment he noticed. The others followed, albeit not as quickly. “I’ll man the boat’s defenses, you all just worry about doing as you’re told.”

Orion stumbled back up the stairs and began gathering things himself. Everyone collected shots for the ballistae and as many healing items as they could carry. It would be a bad idea to have anyone going back below deck during the fight because they didn’t stock up. The Jhen was going to require their utmost attention.

Hitting the deck in record time given that only one of them had ever done battle on a ship before, Orion and Kean grabbed control of the ballistae first, and the moment the Jhen was in range they fired volleys of meter-long spears into the beast. At first, it seemed the Jhen didn’t notice their attacks. It kept on swimming through the sand, a mobile mountain of rock and sandblasted hide. When it finally turned its attention to the boat and Tyr could finally appreciate how massive the dragon really was, he shivered. Not only were the rumors of the Jhen true, but they actually fell short of the mark.

It was incredible to think that the Sea of Sand was deep enough for it to fully submerge itself, but the behemoth dove as it came for them, vanishing beneath the waves. Twin tusks, almost a fourth the length of its body, launched sand hundreds of feet into the air when the Jhen resurfaced, but more than sand fell back to the boat. Delex, half a dozen of them, suddenly littered the deck, and it was Tyr and Keyns’s job to get them back off of it. The task was easy enough under normal circumstances, but the ravenous sandfish were only a seasoning to the plate of danger the Jhen presented.

While Keyns blasted another of the Delex back into the sea, and Tyr cut down his third, the Jhen surfaced less than a hundred meters away, blocking out the horizon. “Switch!” Kean called, rushing to Orion’s ballista just as Orion slipped away from it. Kean twisted the firing mechanisms, pulled them back half a foot, and then squeezed the triggers. “Binders!” he cried. A series of cabled harpoons simultaneously shot out from evenly spaced holes across the port side and from the other two ships. The warship turned sharply, yanking on the cables roughly to tear out hunks of flesh and muscle. It stopped the Jhen’s advance, but it also focused the Jhen solely on their ship. It was best this way, and they all had to keep telling themselves that.

Turning as fast as possible, the warship headed for the nearest shoreline, nearly an hour away. Getting the Jhen as far from the city as possible was one thing, but making certain it couldn’t get back was another. Kean and Orion continued launching shot after shot; Tyr and Keyns gathered additional shots, handing them off to the gunners whenever they ran low, and beating back Delex that got too close. Even moving as fast as they did, the Jhen caught up with them, its massive body dwarfing their forty-meter ship with ease. That’s when it rammed against them.

Tyr was flung halfway across the ship, and the only reason Keyns didn’t do the same was because of his recent decoration improvements. The ship was weighted heavily in the lowest decks to keep it from capsizing, but the way the ship rocked one could barely tell. They continued to fire, but now it was the non-gunners’ turn to do some damage. At the rear of the boat was a large pile of cannonballs, roped down to keep them in place in all the fighting. They grabbed a single, heavy shot each, and loaded them into a cannon, firing them off as quickly as the cannons would allow. The explosions blasted chunks of sand and scales off the frightfully powerful dragon, and it bellowed its rage.

“Move!” Kean called as the Jhen came barreling towards them again. Tyr barely had time to react as the incredible tusks swept up the deck, nearly cracking the reinforced mast, and sending a dozen cannonballs flying off into the sand. He leapt, foolishly, towards the front of the ship and was hit harder than a Rhennox at full charge. It felt like his body snapped in half, like his midsection was simply ripped out and he was just a set of limbs sailing through the air. When the sand broke his fall, the jolt shocked his crushed ribs back into reality, and he was consumed by blackness.

“Keep fighting,” Kean ordered Keyns, who was gaping in horror. “The crew will pull him back in.” He’d seen the anchoring rope as it was shot around Tyr’s waist midair, but he still couldn’t move. It was impossible to think that Tyr could be taken out so easily, especially after the way he’d conquered that Los. “Tail Guy!” his Prince shouted, breaking all other thoughts. “If you don’t move, you are going to be next.” So, while a team of sailors helped pull Tyr in, the other three worked faster and harder to make up for their fallen comrade.

Tyr wasn’t out for very long, in the crew were three Guild medics who, just like the Felyne Rescue Squad, got Tyr back to full hunting condition in a matter of minutes. He barely had time to open his eyes as they pulled him out of bed and strapped his armor back on for him. It’d been a long, long time since Tyr had needed Guild medics, and he’d forgotten how fast the healing process could be when his chakra wasn’t entirely gone. They never said a word, never bothered to encourage a hunter to get back into the fight, even though Tyr felt like he could use it this time. He waited for a signal from above, and when he heard Kean yell out “Now!” he rushed back onboard and set back to work.

There was a methodical nature to the fight, even though every second Tyr’s pulse pounded and Keyns strained to keep his stamina up. They grabbed supplies, they made certain the gunners were stocked, and they switched to cannon fire if the beast got within the set line of fire and the incredibly short range. Orion and Kean fired ballista shots as though they’d never exhaust their supply, and the hope was they wouldn’t. As Keyns fired off what seemed like his fiftieth cannon shot, it smashed into the Jhen’s tusk and the crack Tyr had thought was just superficial widened with frightening speed. The tusk itself dropped into the sand like a stone, and bone fragments showered the deck, some of them as large as man’s head.

Keyns pointed and shouted something, even as the Jhen’s near-deafening roar shook the entire warboat. The group froze, their bones rattling, except for Kean who kept right on firing. High Grade Earplugs, that was an armor skill the rest of them wished they’d invested in. Then again, none of them had the time or the materials except Orion, and he’d been content without it. As they were recovering, the ship’s captain shouted something none of them could hear with their ringing ears.

They crashed.

Everyone reached for whatever they could to keep from being thrown too far, but the impact was too sudden. The Jhen, hardly more prepared for it than the crew, rolled with earthshaking force onto the beach nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the sea. Orion had to keep himself rolling to avoid the mast, which had snapped and careened down into the sand. A hard gong, one that normally was used to stun the Jhen, rang out as the mast crashed through the space he’d been a moment before. In the distance, lying supine on the desert beach, the once fearsome dragon seemed almost harmless. Its giant flat legs flapped uselessly as the hunters checked on supplies and the status of their only useful weapons. The boat wasn’t going to sail again, but the ballistae worked, and the cannons did too. Or at least the ones pointing towards the Jhen did, thank Poogie.

No sooner had they finished checking all this than the Jhen was righted. They waited for it to decide on what to do, and when its simple, rage-filled brain recognized the wreckage of its attacker, they had their answer. “Fire at will!” Kean ordered, as the behemoth lumbered towards them. Again, an endless volley of streamlined lances rained down on then Jhen as though there weren’t already hundreds in his hide. It bled a magnificent red, leaving a trail of gooped-up sand as it inched towards the boat with only one purpose in mind.

“My Prince!” a man shouted from belowdecks. “The Dragonator! It’s jammed!”

“What the hell do you mean?” Kean practically roared. “If that thing gets alongside us we’ll all be dead!”

“We’re working on it, my Prince; we’ll let you know as soon as it’s fixed.”

Last time, there hadn’t been this much trouble. Azusa had actually found her way onto the massive creature. She’d smashed holes in the Jhen that he could still see, and whenever it got too close, the explosive impact from her hammer had very nearly been powerful enough to knock the Jhen away. He had managed to convince himself that this time the Jhen was angrier, or that it had somehow been tired before, but who could know such things when it came to an Elder Dragon? They desperately loaded, fired, and reloaded, hoping that the lumbering mountain would fall, or decide to retreat. It seemed like both an eternity and no time at all before it was right up against the ship.

This close, one could see the scars from previous battles, and the old ballista shots that were still too stubborn to let go. The thick gouges from their battle dripped the darkest drops of crimson blood any of them had ever seen onto the deck. They splashed everything, and the gigantic tusk above them could’ve stretched across more than two of their decks put side by side. Opening its giant mouth, the Jhen sucked in all the warmth from the air as it reared up for a brutal finish.

“It’s ready!” someone shouted. A distant voice that echoed off the ballooning dragon. Kean raced up the steps to the head of the ship and leapt onto the triggering mechanism for the Dragonator.

A pair of massive drills launched with the power of a gunshot at the beast’s soft stomach. The points whirled against what should have been a tender underbelly - coated in sand and smeared blood - for a few moments, and slowed dangerously as the Jhen Mohran pressed up against them. Kean watched in horror as the drills stopped and the elder dragon came down for the kill. He prayed to the gods to save his family and his city, his new wife, and even his new sister There was nothing to keep him alive now, and so he also prayed that his death would be sudden.

The drills bent, cracked, and then punctured through. Twin streams of air and blood flowed freely out of the quickly deflating Jhen. Its last full tusk slammed into the ground, splintered at the base and fell to the deck where Keyns had to dive out of the way. Unable to retract, the Dragonator’s drills held the folded beast aloft. Maybe it was Kean who was the first to laugh, or it might’ve been Orion. It didn’t matter who started though, because in moments the entire crew of the warship was laughing, shouting, and crying like they’d never done so before.