Lady of the Hunt

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Adara hated the sewers.

She had been chasing the drakaina for 2 days now. It had started out as a report of a few too many male deaths near Silver Lake, and Leonidas had sent out Adara, Cadmus, and Calista to check it out.

Cadmus and Calista had split off from her, as per usual. They liked one another's company—and Adara liked to work alone. She didn't dislike hanging out with the pair; they were her closest friends, but hunting had become a solitary activity for her—a place where she could rest her mind and feel truly at peace.

It hadn't started like that. When she was younger, she would've found the idea of going hunting alone deplorable. The huntresses went out to hunt together—always in one group and always with their leader, Artemis, at their head.

But it had been roughly a year and a half since Adara had hunted with the Ladies of the Hunt, as they were called. A year and a half since she had left when she turned sixteen and eventually found a new home in Los Angeles at the Temple.

She didn't think about her old home much. At one time, thoughts of her past might have made her nostalgic for it—might have made her upset because she knew she could never return to her home or her family—but now, thoughts of home had stopped making her feel that sharp jab of pain.

This world, the real world, had its advantages, she'd learned pretty quickly. Here she had friends—real friends her age, like Calista and Cadmus. She had freedom to do whatever she pleased here, and the hunting wasn't half bad.

Her education had been amazing. She'd only graduated a month or two before, and that she already missed. Zephyr had worked with her for hours, privately tutoring her after the public classes. She'd mastered every weapon he'd thrown at her with pleasure. He'd often said she was the best hunter he'd ever seen.

People at the temple didn't call them hunters, though. Adara's occupation, even though she wasn't quite eighteen yet, was called a "Guardian of Man", or a "Guardian" for short. Her job was to protect unsuspecting humans from the monsters that lived amongst them, the premier job of most half-gods.

Like the drakaina that she was hunting right now. Adara had found her lair within the first day and a half of hunting. That night, she hadn't gone back to meet her friends at the spot where they'd agreed upon, simply opting to text them a message saying she was okay, because she knew she was close.

Sleeping outside in a park, under a tree, reminded her of home anyways. The huntresses lived outside, in tents, so an occasional outdoor evening was comfortable to Adara. Besides, the air at Silver Lake was already clearer than that of downtown LA, and she enjoyed it while she was able to be out of the city.

That was the one thing Adara remembered hating when she first arrived to the city. She was in love with the real world and LA, in love with the hustle and bustle and alive feeling of the world that moved so quickly—but pollution reeked.

The drakaina, seeming to be able to sense someone was watching her, snuck away that night. Adara had followed her trail to the marina, on the other side of LA, and quickly confronted her.

However, the drakaina simply slipped away again, much to Adara's annoyance. This dragon-woman was harder to catch than she had thought. That was the big difference between hunting back at camp and now here, in LA.

At camp, they had hunted both animals and monsters, whatever pleased Artemis at the time. However, they hunted mostly animals, and Adara had found monsters a pleasant challenge most of the time. Now, as a Guardian, she exclusively hunted monsters.

It was nearing evening as she began to close in on the drakaina for the third time. This time, she'd followed it into the underneath of the heart of LA—the sewers. Adara was lucky to have packed a flashlight, which she clutched in her left hand while her right hand clutched a Xiphos.