After the fight’s conclusion, the bodies of the pirates were thrown overboard, and the few who were still alive were restrained, their weapons and armor removed, to be scrapped or reused for the civilians of Furthenmel. Meanwhile, Catastrae had to clean up her mess, burning her demon eyes to cinder before they could cause even more casualties.

In the end, the pirate’s ship was attached to the merchants’ and towed toward the shore.

“So what’s going to happen to the pirates?” Catastrae asked, now overlooking the leaving boats with Challad.

“Difficult to say,” he said. “The captain’s elite soldiers, the ones who wore the sulfurous armor, will more likley be sent to death, but her lackeys with the obsidian chainmail will more likley have the option of exile or slavery. Any of them might also be allowed to join The Hunting.”

Catastrae frowned. “The Hunting?”

“In Furthenmel, we draft able men and women each year for a month of hunting, taking down the dangerous beasts that roam near the city. Prisoners can also join The Hunting to lessen the severity of their punishment since there are a number of monsters in the desert who are considered too dangerous to hunt.”

“How often do they actually come back?”

Challad scoffed. “I know the number, but they don’t get the luxury of knowledge.”

“Hmm...and...what are they going to hunt this year?”

He frowned, noticing Catastrae’s strange expression. “The desert scourge. Recently it began hunting near the desert surface due to the appearance of The Great Land Shark, and we’ve been forced to take countermeasures ag-”

“Oh, yeah I killed that thing.”

He blinked. “You...killed it?”

“Yeah. It’s as dead as can be. Blown to bits. Boom.”

“That’s...awfully convenient. I didn’t expect to say this to a disciple, but thank you.”

“No problem.” Catastrae stretched her arms. Her body still felt sluggish after nearly dying, but her wounds had been healed by another healing potion that had been found on the pirate’s ship. “Now, I’m pretty tired, so could you get me a nice bed to sleep on? Something to minimize the pain.”

He nodded. “Of course. You don’t understand how much you’ve helped me today, thank you.”

“Did I really do all that much?” she asked with confusion.

“I couldn’t have defeated those pirates alone. They used to be Yharim’s soldiers, so they had both the training, experience, and firepower to lay claim to the seas. I couldn’t afford to fight them, and they couldn’t afford to fight me. Without someone to break our stalemate, they would’ve continued harassing our merchants until the end of my days.”

“What, you don’t have anyone else who could help?”

He shook his head. “It isn’t every day that someone with half the power I have comes along, let alone someone like you.”

“Gotcha. Well, lead me to a sleeping room and rations and we can call it even.”

“I can’t help but feel nervous, giving you so little. Are you sure you don’t want me to forge you any armor or weapons? I should have plenty of cobalt to scrap from their ship to make you anything you need.”

“Cobalt?” She glanced at the ship. “Is that what it’s made of?”

“You...didn’t recognize it...?” he said with hushed confusion. “But yes.”

“Well, armor couldn’t hurt. Can it fit under my clothes, though? I...’like’ these robes.” She glanced at her robe, which had repaired itself automatically using her magic.

“Easily. Although, it may take some time for me to forge armor like that. Do you mind staying for a week or so?”

“I can do that.”

“Then consider it done.”

Catastrae was escorted to an inn, where she was provided the best bedding and food available, and the next day, she woke up feeling less-bad.

She immediately made her way down to the continental shelf above the desert, a cliff that spanned far beyond the horizon in either direction. There, she began her daily routine.

First, she found a boulder around three meters in diameter and wretched it from the ground, hefting it over her shoulders. From there, she lifted it up and down atop her head for 100 repetitions. She then hauled it onto her feet and did the same with her legs, pushing the enormous rock up and down. The lab had gravity anklets to train with, but she didn’t have that anymore, so she had to find her own ways to train her body.

She then increased her load, finding a rock that was double the weight and testing herself with that. It seemed to be a better fit for her physical ability, so she used it to train instead.

Her and her sisters had followed the healthiest possible routines they could have, when they were in Draedon’s lab, however their minds hadn’t been taken care of in the slightest. Catastrae had remembered those routines, and so she followed them, working to keep herself in peak condition.

He’ll regret ever giving me life.

Her mind only grew more tense as she exercised, her focus falling toward her aimless mission. She had to show Draedon just what mistake he made, doing what he did to her. If Catastrae was perfectly honst, she didn’t know what she wanted. In fact, she didn’t know what she should want, if she was perfectly honest to herself.

I need to get revenge.

That was all she knew for sure. Anything else she would have to learn on her way forward.

And so, she worked her body without pause, spending hours alternating between whatever excercizes she should think of.

“W-what do you need, mam?” A man asked behind a counter, looking at catastrae with a nervous expression. Her grey hair was a mess by now, and a number of still-healing scars were strung across her face.

She frowned as she stepped to the counter, looking around with heavy breaths. It was some sort of bar, where a number of people about it were drinking to their heart’s content...or had, until the so-called diciple of calamitas had walked in.

“The bounties. What needs taking care of?” she asked, fanning her robe to cool herself.

“Umm...you can just look at the board over there. Beasts and bandits get their place on the board, if that’s what you’re seekin’.”

“Okay.”

She stepped in the direction that the barkeep had pointed, and stationed herself in front of it. A label at the top of the board read, ‘The Beasts and Bandits’ and was packed to the brim with papers depicting various beasts and people, although many were lacking a visual.

It was separated into two sides; one for bandits and the other for beasts. Although, the papers themselves were so great in number that two smaller boards had been stuck to the wall. There were at least a hundred, and the board stretched all the way to the ceiling, where glass roof tiles let the afternoon light filter from above.

She skimmed over the entries:

{The Mummy Swarm}

{Sand Elemental}

{Tumbleweed Terror}

{Soul-Stealing djinn}

“Hmm...” She read the description of the soul-stealing djinn:

{A pyramid which used to float over the sea was buried under the sands after the witch burned it away. It was used to seal away a djinn who had once stolen the souls of an entire town. Although nobody has seen the djinn in person, anyone who enters the fallen pyramid dissapears, so it’s assumed that it’s fall caused the dhjin to become unsealed.}

{Djinns are known for their ability to fabricate mundane substances through their magic, and have similar properties to elementals. Their power is Either seal it away or destroy it for good. This foe is thought to be Cobalt-level. Reward: 13 cobalt coins.}

Catastrae took the paper to the counter. “I’ll hunt this.”

“O-okay. I’ll bring you the hunting location, but...you’re not meant to take the paper...”

“Oh.”

Catastrae struggled to move as sand and wind pushed her back, forcing her backward.

This part of the desert was currently enraptured by a sandstorm of catastrophic proportions; the wind so furious that, were it to move into any town, it would be torn to bits in mere moments.

This did not confuse Catastrae. She didn’t have any frame of reference for how deadly the storm was, nor did she know the origin of it; the collosal sand elemental that drowned the desert in sand as easily as it moved.

She simply toughed it out, powerwalking at a fourty-five degree angle as bulletlike sand battered her skin. Flying wouldn’t cut it, at these speeds. She had to brace her body against the ground to stand any chance.

A number of strange, brown objects flew her way, blowing with the wind as they radied to impale her with their sharpened ends, but when they approached, she simply blew them to bits with a few darts of brimflame, hardly paying the tumbleweeds any mind.

Finding a yellowish pyramid in a desert the size of a country would have been difficult, especially with the somewhat vague directions Catastrae had been given, though it had only taken about a day to find with her bird’s eye view. Unfortunately, she had made the mistake of getting lost in a sandstorm, and moving underground wouldn’t make things all that much easier.

She held her staff forward, then blew a hole through the hair with the largest explosion she could muster, burning the sand in front of her away and tumbling backward from the recoil.

There. She stared across the parted sandstorm, where a pyramid stood, around a mile away. The sand quickly moved to replace what had been burned.

She planted a foot forward, then scrambled across the ground, breaking the rock underneath with each step, and facing into the sand. Her blast, however, served as a beacon for the creatures of the desert.

Three vultures sped through the wind, crashing into her with their beaks, only for her to grab two of them and combust them from the inside out. The last, with its beak shallowly piercing into her chest, was grabbed by the skull and crushed through sheer strength.

A number of worms burrowed out from the ground, grasping onto her feet and clothes, but she paid the insignificant creatures no mind, kicking them off incidentally.

Finally, a brown shark armored in dust and stone burst from the ground, biting into her arm and drawing blood.

“Get. The Hell. Off of me!” she yelled with frustration, blasting it with brimflame. The attack hadn’t killed it for sure, but the creature swam away through the sand, scared off.

Eventually, her struggles landed Catastrae at the base of the pyramid, where she blasted her way into the stone, finally taking refuge under shelter.

She breathed hoarsely, starved of oxygen and bleeding, and scraped all about. “This damned place...” she muttered. “Won’t be the last hell I have to burn my way through.” She shook her head as she spat sand out of her mouth, shook off her robes, and combed it out of her hair. “This storm is nothing but infuriating.”

Her robe had been ripped and torn by the storm, but its repairing magic had been enough to keep it together.

After emptying her shoes of sand, she struggled with her magic, hovering over her now-cauterized wound and trying to find some way to heal it.

“Heal, damn you!” she yelled, channeling her frustration. Her wound suddenly burned, growing even more painful as a direct result of her magic. She breathed hoarsely, enduring the pain as best she could. “She can do it...why can’t I!?” She threw her fist into the wall, leaving a crater in the rock.

She looked over her body, her skin scarred and burned from the sand. “This hurts so much...everything hurts...”

For some reason, it hadn’t been so bad earlier, but now that she had found a place to rest, the small nicks felt...irrepressible.

She began to scratch at her left arm with her right, then did the same with her left. I could handle an axe in my back...why is this so much worse!?

She began to scratch every inch of her body, pulling up her robe to scratch at anything she hadn’t gotten to. Even though scratching hurt more, it felt cathartic compared to the sandburn.

Eventually, she fell to the ground, tearing up. It hurts so much...

Taking this bounty felt like a huge mistake. The hastle of trying to follow directions through the unfamiliar desert, seeking the pyramid, and camping on her way forward had felt small until now, but now...now she felt horrible.

She once again raised her hand to her arm and channeled her regret into it, hoping she might be able to turn back time on its injury.

She fell to the ground, crying tears in pain as the scars burnt, fire literally pouring from them.

The small, unbleeding wounds became cauterized, only intensifying the pain further, and in a way that wouldn’t simply pass with time.

She’d cried enough from the wind and sand but now she teared up from regret. “Why am I even doing this?” she despondently muttered to herself. “What’s the point?”

Slowly, she stood, her chest feeling empty, and pointed a hand at the wall. As she channeled her mind into magic, she felt sick; empty

She tore a hole through the stone, and pressed forth into the catacomb, searching for a reason to live.