HROT 3: End of All Things

Chapter 1: The Hunt

Shannon Bond slowly exhaled as the bowstring dug into the creases of her fingers. The unsuspecting four-eyed deer on the rocks ahead was thoughtlessly grazing on shrubs. Its ears flicked as insects buzzed around its head, and its immense array of antlers made Shannon question how its neck supported its weight.

Shannon's arm shook with fatigue as she carefully aimed at the prey. Her stomach growled and she intensified her focus to keep from getting distracted. Her meal was directly ahead, and it was up to herself to ensure it.

She let the arrow fly. It sailed through the air nearly as quickly as a bullet. Her heart leapt in satisfaction as the projectile pierced the beast's heart. The deer let out a yelp, ran a few feet, and then collapsed dead on the rocks.

Shannon's stomach rumbled with glee as she sprinted from her hiding spot behind a bush and deftly landed from rock to rock, her feet gracefully landing with each step, until she reached the fallen game. She slid to her knees and drove her serrated dagger into the deer's chest, cutting her way down its abdomen until a fine sliver gave way to an onrush of blood and guts. She didn't care about the odor as she buried her hands into the creature and removed its internal organs.

As she was skinning the animal, she saw a figure approaching. It was Ascensdion. Her mysterious companion wore a tattered leather cloak over a chain armor set. A helmet with a single slit for his unseen eyes covered his face. He stood over the deer and crossed his arms expectantly. Shannon handed him the heart, which he promptly stuffed into his knapsack. "This should feed us for a few days at least," she remarked.

Ascensdion's silence had become commonplace to her; the armored warrior had never spoken a word to her. She had initially found it unsettling, but now it was pleasant to her—she wasn't in the mood for much talk as of late.

She gestured to the corpse. "You mind?" Ascensdion lifted the deer over his shoulders without even a grunt. Shannon followed him as they headed for the pillar of smoke in the distance.

When they reached the campsite, they found the third member of their party gesturing to the fire pit. "Would you mind, Ascensdion?" he asked. Ascensdion extended his hand and blasted a pillar of fire so intense that it singed the hairs on Shannon's arms. "Aha!" the third member exclaimed. "That ought to do nicely!" The white-skinned, near-bald man in the white cloak helped Ascensdion lower the kill. Shannon grimaced at the sight of the man every time she saw him, despite their familiarity. Serh appeared to be a man more ancient than the planets, so wrinkled and withered that his eye sockets looked empty, despite the fact that he could see. The aged sorcerer often used his apparent frailty to lull adversaries into a false sense of confidence—right before he obliterated them in the blink of an eye.

The wrinkles of Serh's smile showed even with the white mask covering the lower half of his face as Ascensdion handed him the bleeding heart of the beast. "Wonderful!" Serh said as he squished the organ in his bony hand. "May this creature's sacrifice ensure our success!" With that, he threw the heart into the fire and stretched his hands out toward the flame. He uttered an ancient saying that Shannon couldn't begin to repeat, and the flames rose up intensely until the heart within crackled and popped and then was reduced to ash.

Shannon shook her head. Serh's tradition of burning the heart was said (by Serh, of course) to bring good luck. Crike knows they needed it, she thought. They hadn't had much luck lately, what with Harout's awakening and the seeming doom of the universe.

This very issue seemed to have entered Serh's mind at the same time as Shannon's. The ancient man gazed into the gray overcast sky and uttered, "I wonder why he hasn't wiped us out yet."

Shannon wondered the same thing. They had heard the thunderous sound of Harout's awakening three days ago, and their hearts had sunk at that very moment, thinking they were about to be obliterated. But still nothing had happened, and on a clear night, with Ascensdion's keen eyes, they could determine that Harout was nearly frozen in place, seemingly halted from his own fury. "Maybe it's not meant to end this way," Shannon remarked with the faintest hopefulness.