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The gathering hall was alive with the sounds of activity, even from without. A venerable old structure of reclaimed stone blocks and rough-hewn wooden supports, it was as unpolished as the rowdy crowds that passed through it on a daily basis. Like them, it was strong and purposeful, looming above the buildings that radiated outward from it like spokes on a wheel. And like them, its grandeur intimidated her even as it drew her hopes and dreams ever toward it.

The sun had only just begun to creep over the mountain peaks on the horizon, but already the plaza bustled with eager enterprise. Vendors’ stalls lined the avenues leading up to the gathering hall, and their occupants haggled and bargained with hunters and locals both. The crowds were but a pale foreshadowing of the tumult that would seize the plaza by midday; Stark was quickly becoming a center of trade, and as Mikayla stood there amidst the hubbub, a feeling of intense pride swelled up within her. More than once, she’d lamented her misfortune at being born in such a backwater spitball of a frontier town. But over the last year, Stark’s fortunes had grown—and she was going to see hers grow along with it.

Still, she hesitated. Though she’d lived in Stark all her life, and though one of her closest friends worked for the Guild as a receptionist at the hall, she’d never actually been inside that imposing edifice. Though the gathering hall had been around for as long as Stark had—it was one of the first structures erected when settlers staked out the mountain valley that cradled the city—she had always treated it with a bit of contempt. It was an uncouth building, largely unchanged since the earliest days when the frontiersmen were making huts out of whatever loose rocks and sticks they could cobble together from their surroundings.

These days, the builders were more organized, the houses cleaner and straighter, the building materials imported from the coast as much as they were taken from local quarries. But the Guild never renovated the gathering hall. It was a symbol of mankind’s perseverance in the face of adversity—or something like that. Until now, Mikayla had always thought it was a maudlin sentiment meant to cover up the fact that Stark was a nowhereville that nobody cared about except those who lived there. But Stark wasn’t a nowhereville anymore, and so maybe she could start to get behind that maudlin sentiment. Just a little.

A pair of hunters pushed past her, laughing with one another, as she dawdled. They pulled open the heavy leather flaps that still served as the hall’s door to step inside, and more laughter and shouting emerged from within the lamplit depths in those brief moments. The smell of breakfast wafted out with them, bacon and sausage and eggs and fried bread and fresh-squeezed mountain lime juice, courtesy of the gathering hall’s twenty-four-hour kitchen.

Mikayla drew her back straight and squared her shoulders, and not just because the smell made her stomach growl. Today was the day. She had a plan, and it was going to work, probably, and she’d take her rightful place in the Guild. Why should these foreign carpetbaggers get all the glory, not to mention the money? She hiked the strap of her bowgun further up her shoulder, and after one or two deep breaths to ready herself, she strode forward through the doorflaps.

Her eyes quickly adjusted to the light; lamps blazed in every corner, hanging from the rafters, perched on the ends of every bar and counter, dangling from hooks nailed roughly into the walls. It was nearly as bright inside as out. Her ears, on the other hand, did not adjust quickly to the noise—hunters were not generally known to be a quiet, contemplative lot, and frontier hunters were even worse. There must have been three dozen people in the main room, and all of them seemed to be shouting at the top of their lungs. Nearly every table was filled with men and women alike, draped in a cacophony of shapes and colors, practical armor forged from the very bones and hides of their conquests. It was a sign of pride and honor for a hunter to wear the skins of his own kills, and everyone seemed to be competing with everyone else to decorate themselves with ever more exotic materials.

She wore gear like them, though maybe she didn’t exactly get it from her own kills. The parts were all from a nargacuga, a notoriously stealthy ambush predator that she had never actually personally seen outside of illustrations in a book. Loose black trousers were reinforced with stiff midnight scales sewn into the fabric, calf-high waterproof boots and elbow-length gloves alike were fashioned from tough black hide, and her shirt was… well, it was more of a supportive bra than a shirt, with scale-reinforced fabric looped around her breasts and the back of her neck, and overlaid with a light, breathable mesh that both gave her excellent mobility and served to break up her silhouette for improved concealment. A velvety cloth sash completed the ensemble, dyed a dark purple and currently wound around her wrist. Sashes like that were popular to use as bandoliers, and hers had a number of pouches sewn into it for easy access to key tools.

Most of the tables were piled with platters and bowls and mugs, most empty or quickly on their way to becoming empty; the only plates full of food were those being carried to and from the kitchen’s order counter. Dutiful felynes, half the height of a man, walked endless circuits between the tables, ferrying food and cleaning up the remains while hunters boasted with one another, laughing. More than one hunter half stood on his seat as he told one story or another. In the center of the room, a cheering crowd called bets on the outcome of an arm-wrestling match between two musclebound men straining against one another. Every so often, cheers and groans would erupt in unison, money would change hands, and it would begin all over again.

She stood in the entrance, agape, until another hunter entering behind her bumped into her and cleared his throat. She mumbled an apology and scurried further into the gathering hall, eyes darting about for some fixture with which to navigate the chaos. This place was nothing like the quiet, cozy little building that served as the center for minor local requests; Mikayla had been there more than once, and there were only ever a few people present at a time. The noise and activity here made it seem as though the entire city were packed into one room.

She drifted until she found herself standing next to a long, waist-high counter behind which scurried half a dozen felynes operating a dozen different ovens, cookpots, and firepits, all under the watchful eye of a felyne in a white toque. He was walking to and fro, wagging an oversized wooden spoon as he harangued the cooks. A steady stream of servers came and went from the kitchen from a service entrance at the far end of the counter, returning stacks of dishes and emerging with platters full of steaming food.

“Are you purrpared to order, or what?”

Mikayla started, and turned to find the toque-topped felyne standing on top of the kitchen counter and looking her in the eye. She had only taken her eye off him for a second, but there he was, hands on hips, wooden spoon jutting into the air. “I’m not sure—um, what do you have?”

The felyne rolled his eyes, and instead of answering, turned to aggressively beckon over a passing server. With a flick of his spoon, he brought into his hands half of an enormous bagel, split lengthwise and smeared with soft cheese on the inside to form a sort of sandwich. “Look at people wasting my food. Here. You get this.” He shoved the bagel sandwich into Mikayla’s hands without hesitation. “Someone else paid for it. Happy birthday. Who’s next?”

As another hunter shouldered past her to place his order, Mikayla looked down at the food in her hands. Whole, it would have easily been as wide across as her outstretched hand from thumb to little finger. She would have been upset at being given someone’s leftovers, but from the clean cut of the bread, it looked like it wasn’t even touched by whoever bought it—it must have come with something better, or maybe, judging from the size of the platters coming and going, the hunter who bought it simply didn’t have room for any more.

Her stomach rumbled again, and thoughts of indignation faded. She decided to thank her good fortune, and turned to wander through the hall once more as she nibbled on her free breakfast. It was quite good, if chewy, and the cheese had a pleasant salty tang to it that captured her attention. The sandwich was little more than crumbs by the time she had located the Guild’s notice board. It took up the majority of the room’s back wall, festooned with handwritten requests. There had to be dozens of them—maybe a hundred or more—nailed to the board. A handful of hunters stood before the board with crossed arms and thoughtful expressions, eyes scanning the notices.

She followed their example. Anyone within a fifty-mile radius of Stark would send their notices here to be posted, either in person or through the airship mail. Small requests from city residents would usually go to the much smaller station with which Mikayla was more familiar; the requests here came from far-flung base camps, frontier outposts, trade caravans, farmers, and anyone else who lived outside the city limits. Larger local requests would also find their way here, for greater exposure to the train of hunters both foreign and domestic which passed through on a daily basis.

She didn’t rightly know exactly which request to choose. She had a general idea, of course. Monsters of all sorts roamed the wilderness, and they were often a problem for anyone who lived outside the safety of city walls; there were plenty of requests from shepherds and farmers asking for help driving off a monster that was preying on their livestock or eating their crops. Some of the requests were more mercenary in nature: a client who needs this sort of material, or that sort of organ. A few of the notices even seemed to call for little more than a hunt for entertainment’s sake.

Mikayla wasn’t looking to kill anything today. She had something different in mind—something that would be certain to make her mark on the world. Something that the Guild would have to notice right away. She just had to find the right… platform… to showcase her achievement. The right request, the right monster. The problem was, most of these seemed just as good as one another, minus the ones that positively required her to carve up a monster. How to choose?

She had it. She closed her eyes, took a step forward, and ran her hands over the posted missives. Not this one… not this one… “Aha!” That one. That one felt right. Her intuition never failed her, mostly. This would be the means by which she would achieve greatness! She pulled it from the board blindly and looked down to see what she had chosen, ignoring the sidelong glances of the other hunters in front of the board.

It was a request posted by a rancher who lived at the far end of the valley. Some monster had been picking off his livestock over the last couple of weeks, and he was looking for a hunter or two to come down and solve the problem. Mikayla pursed her lips thoughtfully. The rancher probably intended or expected a hunter to kill the monster that had been preying on his livestock, and for that reason alone Mikayla nearly put the request back. But her intuition never failed her, right? She gave it another look. He didn’t say explicitly that the monster had to be killed, only the problem solved. She could just… make the monster stop eating the livestock, right?

A slow smile spread over her face, and she clenched the paper in a fist. Perfect. She didn’t even bother to read the description of the monster before she skipped over to the request counter, a spring in her step.

Her friend, a petite long-haired blonde who made Mikayla self-conscious about her own mousey brown hair, was the receptionist this morning. She was busy working with another hunter at the counter, so Mikayla took up a spot behind him and waited impatiently, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

As she was waiting, her thoughts cast forward to just how she was going to pull her plan off, a rough shove from the side snapped her back to the present. A tall, well-built woman in an armored coat plated in polished green scales was glaring down at her. When Mikayla looked up, blinking, the taller woman’s nose wrinkled. “Aren’t you that potion girl? What are you doing taking up space here?”

Mikayla stiffened her shoulders. She didn’t know the taller woman’s name, but she recognized the attitude instantly. She was a singularly unpleasant customer in Mikayla’s impromptu mixing business. Well, maybe not so much a business as much as having the occasional person willing to pay her to whip something up. She wasn’t quite a beggar, but she couldn’t afford to be choosy either. “I can do more than mix compounds. And there’s nothing wrong with potions! Potions are important.” She folded her arms. “You use them.”

The other woman smirked. “You’re cheap, I’ll give you that. Anyway, get back to brewing. You’re going to make me late to my flight.” She moved as if to cut in front of Mikayla.

“I was here first!”

The hunter rolled her eyes. “All dressed up and ready to go out into the field, huh? Well, let the real hunters get their business out of the way first, and then you can have your little adventures.” She pushed Mikayla aside just as the hunter at the counter finished his business and departed. The receptionist looked up and caught Mikayla’s eye; her eyes widened for a split second before the female hunter interrupted, stepping up to the desk and slapping down a scrap of paper. “Just stamp this and I’ll get out of your way.”

Mikayla’s friend shot her an apologetic look before reviewing the hunter’s request and stamping the appropriate paperwork. She filled out an airship pass and handed it over to the hunter who—true to her word, at least—snatched it up and strode out of the gathering hall without a look back.

“Mikayla! I’m so sorry about that.”

Mikayla smiled. “It’s fine. She’ll get hers. Err, I mean, you know, people like that always manage to get themselves in trouble.” She cleared her throat. “Hi, Lis.”

“I didn’t expect to see you here. You’re not really here to take a request, are you?” Lis’s eyes drifted over Mikayla, taking in her outfit, and came to rest on the bowgun slung from her shoulder.

“I sure am.” Mikayla uncrumpled the request that she had mashed in her fist and smoothed it out across the counter with a smile.

Lis didn’t hide the skepticism in her face as she picked up the request and read through it, nor in her voice as she looked up and furrowed her brow. “Are you serious? Have you ever even been to the frontier?” Even with the skeptical tone, she was gentler than the female hunter had been. Mikayla even thought she heard a hint of worry for her in her friend’s voice.

“I’ve gone on more than one expedition! Remember when I went with Keith to the abandoned quarry?”

“That was less than a mile outside the walls, and Keith told me you set the base camp’s tent on fire.”

Mikayla gestured dismissively. “The mixture was a little bit off, but I nailed it the next time. Plus, I paid for the tent, and Keith comes by for a bottle of the powder all the time. I also went to go gather those rare mushrooms, by myself if you remember—“

“You came back crying and covered in nettles and swore you’d never do it again.”

“I was younger. And emotional at the time. And I’m pretty sure those mushrooms saved that girl’s life.”

“Be that as it may…” Lis frowned down at the request. “I don’t mean to suggest you’re not good at what you do, eventually, but ‘what you do’ hasn’t really historically been… hunting. And you don’t really have a lot of room for failure in the field.”

“But failure is how you learn!”

“I’m just saying I’d rather you not have to learn your last lesson ever, if you know what I mean. I know you have a high tolerance for failure, bless your heart, but your internal organs don’t.”

Mikayla crossed her arms. “Everyone’s got to have their first time, right?”

Lis waved the request in the air. “Have you ever even seen a zinogre?”

“A what? Oh, yeah, of course I have.” That must have been the monster that was mentioned in the request. Lis had taken the time to read what Mikayla hadn’t.

“Outside of a book.”

Mikayla opened her mouth, then closed it.

“That’s what I mean. I know you’ll promise to be extra careful, and I know you’re smart, but this is serious business. There’s a reason why these ranchers have to come all the way up to Stark to post requests like this. And are you even registered with the Guild?”

“Well, I was going to…”

Lis sighed. “Sorry, Mikayla. This isn’t a novice request. Even if you registered right now.”

Mikayla leaned forward onto the counter. “Come on. We’re friends. Can’t you just… stamp it for me like you did the last one? I won’t blame you for anything that happens.”

Lis shook her head. “You wouldn’t, but the Guild would. Besides, the fact that you’re my friend is why I’m not going to do it. These monsters are rough. They don’t just kill livestock. I don’t doubt your enthusiasm, but you have a habit of, um… you know…”

Mikayla sniffed. “I know how to shoot a gun.”

“Well, that’s the bare minimum required, yes. I just don’t want you to get in over your head for once. Look, I’m really sorry, but I can’t do this for you. The Guild would make me wish I were the one in the field with the zinogre. Maybe do something closer to home, hunt some jaggi with a partner, and we can work your way up there. It’s not personal.”

Mikayla sighed. She had not anticipated this, though in retrospect she probably should have guessed that there would be some sort of red tape to go through. The Guild probably didn’t want to be responsible for dumb people getting themselves killed. But she wasn’t going to get herself killed, even if they didn’t believe her—she had a plan. Well, there was nothing to do about it, at least… not like this. She forced a smile back onto her face. “All right, well, I appreciate you thinking of me. Could I register now, at least?”

“Sure! Thanks for understanding. Let me get the paperwork…”

* * *

The sun was already far overhead and beginning its slow downward arc by the time Mikayla stepped onto the gangway leading up to the waiting airship. It was a small skiff, large enough for a handful of passengers and a modest haul of cargo—no grand Guild ship, certainly, but it suited her purposes. In fact, it was altogether perfect for her purposes. It was helmed by a single human, probably the owner, and a pair of lazy-looking felynes. One of the cats lay sprawled on his back along the length of the ship’s railing, and another stood atop a barrel strategically positioned near the boarding hatch, leaning against the ship’s hull and lazily checking passes.

Mikayla anxiously fingered her fresh Guild paperwork, folded neatly within one of the pockets of her sash-cum-bandolier, as the passengers ahead of her displayed their papers one by one. A couple of the passengers looked to be hunters, burdened with gear, and a few more were civilians. After much debate and careful planning, she had decided to go in her hunter’s gear as well. She was a hunter now, officially, after all. She didn’t have anything to hide. Well, she did. But she didn’t have to hide that. But the first step in her plan required her getting on board without arousing suspicion. She had everything carefully planned out, and was rehearsing her lines when the passenger in front of her crossed the threshold onto the ship.

“Good afternoon!” she greeted the felyne deckhand, waiting for no invitation before launching a bright smile. “What a lovely little ship this is—“

“Nyeah, nyeah. Are mew a hunter?”

She froze, poised on the tips of her toes, and slowly lowered herself back to the ground. “Um. Yes. Yes, of course. See?” She hefted the bowgun slung over her left shoulder. “Would you like to see my registration—“

The felyne waved a hand dismissively. “Nyeah, I see. Mew get the Guild discount. Two hundred zenny.” His brows lifted.

Mikayla hesitated, papers still in her sash. He didn’t even want to see them? She deflated, and a frown involuntarily crossed her face. She had spent hours getting everything together! And her plan! “Are you sure—“

One of the passengers behind her coughed politely.

“Right. Um. Here, hold on…” Two hundred wasn’t bad. She could afford it, probably. She dug around in her belt satchel for a handful of coins, and carefully counted two hundred zenny out into the felyne’s outstretched paw. He glanced at it without seeming to count, emptied the money into a sack nailed to the railing, and waved her on.

She crossed the threshold onto the top deck of the airship, disappointed. Well, it was better to be easier than expected than harder, but she was rather looking forward to testing her mind against a somewhat (but not too) suspicious gatekeeper. This gatekeeper barely noticed her. And was that other felyne snoring?

The captain greeted her on the top deck with considerably more gusto than his underlings, and showed her down to where the passengers could store their baggage and rest for the flight. The airship wasn’t large enough for individual rooms for passengers, so she dropped her bowgun and backpack onto a cot and took a seat to wait.

The airship’s itinerary included several stops, with the last one being at the far end of the valley—not coincidentally exactly where Mikayla wanted to be. When she had learned that there was a ship scheduled to pick up mail from the area around the zinogre-besieged ranch, she wasted no time in securing a berth. Of course, without Guild-approved documentation permitting her to hunt in the area, she would have a hard time convincing the captain to let her down at any of the nearby base camps. So she had to improvise.

The next step in her plan needed to wait until the ship was in the air, however, so she had some time to kill before she could execute. She made room for herself on the cot and stretched out on her back next to her bowgun and backpack, arms folded behind her head. She’d go over the details one more time, step by step. She closed her eyes, relaxing, as she visualized herself—

* * *

Something hard prodded her shoulder. “Wake up, nya!”

Mikayla started. Her eyes shot open, and she sat bolt-upright, banging her head on the bulkhead above her. Grimacing and rubbing her forehead, she cast bleary eyes to the side of her cot, where one of the felyne deckhands was standing with a broom in his hands, ready to prod at her again.

“What…?” She felt groggy.

“This is your stop!”

“My stop…?”

Oh no.

“Yes, didn’t mew want to…” The felyne trailed off, taken aback as Mikayla sprung from the cot in a sudden frenzied burst. She wasn’t listening to him anyway; she snatched up her bowgun and backpack as she rose, and didn’t even bother to don them properly, hauling one in each hand as she took the stairs to the top deck two at a time.

She had fallen asleep. The cot wasn’t even that comfortable. She was behind schedule now, terribly behind schedule, and she had to work fast to be able to salvage it. So long as the airship was still in the air, she could at least get a look at the lay of the land. So long as there was some light left, she would have time to do what she needed to do.

It wasn’t. There wasn’t.

The stars twinkled mockingly at her as she burst onto the top deck of the airship. In the flickering lamplight on deck, she could see the silhouette of the airship dock just beyond the railing, the ship lashed securely to its berth with rope. More lamps glowed in the distance, illuminating fragments of a stately ranch house that dominated the flat, grassy land. In every other direction, the distant woods were a black smear against the night.

Mikayla’s heart sank. She stood dumbly on the airship’s deck, staring up at the night sky. How long had she slept? Hours, it must have been. She had gotten up early in the morning, but she didn’t think she was that tired. She struggled to compose her thoughts. Her plan would need to change on the fly, and quick. She had no idea of the lay of the land, no idea where the monster might be nesting, or what direction it even came from. She didn’t know where the base camps in the area were—or if there even were base camps around here. Did hunters come here often? She had no idea.

She was on the verge of a minor panic when she hurried to the airship’s railing. The airship’s captain was coming up the gangway, carrying a mail crate in both hands. “You all right, miss?” he asked as he stepped onto the deck. “Look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“No, no, no, I’m fine,” she blurted. Cheeks flushing, she slung her backpack over one shoulder and her bowgun over the other. “Just, um—ah, embarrassed that I napped the whole way. That’s all.” It was sort of true.

If the captain suspected anything awry, he didn’t show it. He beamed a wide smile down on her. “Naw, it was just a routine trip anyways. Sure you Guild types have seen it a thousand times. You had some business here, now, yeah?”

Mikayla wasn’t quite sure how to handle this. She did have business here, yes, but it wasn’t the sort of business that she could conduct in a few minutes—or that she could tell the captain about. Would he wait for her? No, not likely. She didn’t even know how long it would take. A few hours? She thought it would still be daylight when she started! It could take all night, and… she felt her stomach turning in knots as her mind raced.

She cleared her throat, and forced her best approximation of a stately, measured tone. “Yes, I’m here to—speak to the ranch owner, about some—Guild business.” It wasn’t entirely untrue. It was Guild business, more or less. Just not her business. Officially. Unofficially, she was going to make it her business. But now that was going to be a lot harder than originally anticipated.

The captain nodded. “Well, he’s down there at the foot of the dock, if you want to talk to him. Will you be needing a return trip?”

Mikayla wetted her lips. She had originally planned on finding her way to a base camp directly from the airship, and hitching a ride back. But now, with this unexpected development… would she be able to catch a ride back on this ship? If she waited for another one, how long would it take? Confessing ignorance would blow her cover, so she held her tongue for long seconds, racing to put together a coherent response. In the end, under the pressure, she make her decision. “No, I’ve got my own return trip worked out.” Wow, what a lie that was.

The captain just nodded again. “All right, well, I take it you’ll be disembarking then? Thank you kindly for your patronage, ma’am, and have a good one.”

She had no idea what she was going to do, exactly. She didn’t even quite know why she answered that she was going to stay here, except… well, she couldn’t just go back, could she? That would be giving up. No, she was not a quitter. She had a goal here, and even if the plan was ever so slightly disrupted she would find a way to route around it. She didn’t quite know what that plan was, but she could improvise.

She offered the captain a bright, insincere smile. “Thank you! Have a good trip back, sir.” With that, she disembarked, picking her way down the rickety gangway to a sturdier boarding platform about six or seven feet off the ground. There were a few more mail crates stacked on the platform, and standing watch over them stood a diminutive figure in loose, airy clothing. His skin was sallow in the lamplight, and his ears stretched out long like pointed daggers—the last thing Mikayla had expected was a wyverian. He mumbled to himself over some paperwork in his hands.

Mikayla cleared her throat, and the man glanced up at her, adjusting a pair of spectacles on his nose. “Mmm? Yes? And you are, miss?”

She wasn’t quite sure if there was an official-sounding way to answer that. Was there some sort of secret Guild greeting? She wet her lips and took a shot. “Good evening, sir. My name is Mikayla, and I’m here from the Guild to help you investigate your, ah—recent issues.”

The wyverian’s eyes lit up. “Ah! Yes. I was starting to wonder. Good, good. With the Guild, are you? Yes, mmm. Yes. It’s been weeks. Lost a couple more stock in the last few days, but—here, we can talk about this shortly, once we’ve gotten this wrapped up. Just a few more parcels to account for. Pardon me.”

People were awfully trusting. Well, she did look the part, with her black-as-night monster garb and her bowgun. And this fit into her plan. Sort of—as much as she had a plan, now. She was playing it by ear. She did feel ever so slightly guilty about tricking him, but it was to help him out, right? She was sure he’d forgive her. If he ever found out. Which he wouldn’t.

She waited patiently for the last of the mail to be loaded onto the airship. The wait gave her some time to crystallize her new plan, though by the time the wyverian was ready to return, she hadn’t gotten particularly far in it. But she had one step, and that was enough for now. She could think while walking, too.

“Thank you for your patience, miss.” The rancher dusted off his hands on his robe as he approached. Behind him, the airship had been loosed from its moorings and was beginning a controlled ascent into the night sky. With it went her last chance of returning home tonight, and she watched it disappear into the darkness with a twinge of uncertainty. She was deep in it now. But there was nothing to do about it, was there? Nothing but charge ahead!

“Miss?”

Mikayla started, and cleared her throat, flushing. “Yes, excuse me. I was thinking. Why don’t you show me where you saw this, ah, zinogre?” She almost forget what monster she was looking for. She resisted the urge to reach into her pocket and pull out the Guild notice that she had surreptitiously taken from the board. Ostensibly, she had returned it for a higher-ranked hunter to take, but she couldn’t risk someone swooping in and killing her target.

“Oho, right to work, is it? Well, I don’t blame you, it is getting on in hours. Come then, it’s a bit of a walk.” She followed him down the steps from the airship dock and along a simple packed dirt road. The full moon overhead was bright enough to dimly illuminate the road’s outline, as well as the silhouettes of objects in the distance, but Mikayla still preferred the warm light cast by the rancher’s handheld lamp. “It broke part of the fence a few days ago—at least, I suppose it was the monster. We didn’t spy it at the time, though I can’t imagine what else would have broken the fence and carried off a moofah. It did make a mighty mess of the landscape.”

Mikayla saw what he meant when they came to the far end of the ranch. The sturdy fence that circumscribed the grassy pastures had been broken through in a span ten or twelve feet wide. The shattered wooden planks had been collected and stacked to one side, and the gap mended with new wood. Clods of grass and dirt had been torn up from the ground on both sides of the fence. She knelt next to a gouge in the ground, as if she knew exactly what to look for, and peered closely inside. Long, narrow gashes split the dirt at the bottom of the gouged area.

“Can you make anything out of it?” the rancher asked.

“Mmm. Mmm. This was a monster, all right. Look at these claw marks. Not the biggest one, but you know, these things can be very dangerous no matter how big they are. Not to be taken lightly.” That sounded appropriately Guild-y, she thought. She cast her eyes to the other gouges in the ground, humming thoughtfully, and then an insight struck her. The marks formed an almost perfect U-turn from one edge of the now-repaired gap to the other. Delighted with the observation, she followed the tracks as they looped.

“Well, look at this, see? It came in here, and made a loop like this without even stopping. It was going full speed the entire time. In and out, just like that. It knew exactly what it was going for, grabbed it, and got out. A very smart monster.”

“Oh, yes, I do see.” The rancher sounded impressed, which tickled Mikayla pink. “Mmm. I suppose it’s good that it didn’t want to cause any more damage than that, but if we’re dealing with a particularly smart predator…” He trailed off, looking up at Mikayla.

She folded her arms and peered past the fence into the darkness beyond. A few dozen feet more of grassy land terminated abruptly at the edge of a thick forest. “It came out of there in a surgical strike. Yes, this one will take a bit of finesse. But I know how to make it stop harassing your ranch.”

“Ohh? You’ve dealt with these kinds of situations before, then.”

“Oh, um—yes, of course. It’s a bit less straightforward than your standard hunt, but it can be done.”

“Well, you sound like you know what you’re talking about. Mmm, will you be starting right away? We can put you up in the guest house if you’d like to wait until the morning.”

Mikayla opened her mouth, then closed it just as quickly. She almost took him up on his offer. It was late, it was dark, and it would be easier to track during the day. But the longer she waited, the greater the chance that someone back at the gathering hall would realize she’d absconded with the job notice. And what would she do if the zinogre returned tonight? She had to find it in the field for her plan to work right. Plus, her nargacuga gear was excellent for night stalking, and she wanted to put it to its full use.

“I do appreciate the offer, but it’s better to get this done sooner rather than later. Don’t worry, sir, I’ll take care of it by the morning.” She flashed her teeth in a wide smile.

“My, well, are you sure? You Guild hunters have such a work ethic. Well, I won’t want to slow you down, then. You’ll be all right from here?”

She nodded. “Your problem will be fixed by the time you wake up.”

It was the rancher’s turn to smile. “Wonderful! Wonderful. Well, I won’t keep you. Do be careful, miss.” With that, he turned to head back down the path toward the ranch house in the distance, leaving Mikayla alone in the moonlit dark.

She waited until his lamplight was a speck in the distance before she exhaled heavily. That went better than anticipated. She hoped she could fulfill the promise she just made—perhaps guaranteeing a solution by sunup was a bit optimistic, a bit too much playing it by ear. There was nothing for it, though. She just had to forge ahead. She was sure it would be fine. She unshouldered her backpack and crouched to rummage through it, digging around for a torch.

She didn’t find one.

“Hmm.” She had neglected to pack one. Or a lamp. Or any light source, really. Well, of course, her original plan was to arrive while it was still light—she had underestimated the amount of time it would take to get to the ranch in the first place. Or perhaps she left a bit late. Or both. With a heavy sigh, she stood again and looked between the dark silhouette of the woods and the full moon hanging low in the sky. “I guess it’s just you and me tonight, buddy.” It would be fine. A torch would have killed her night vision anyway, right? She shouldered her pack again and picked her way past the fence to follow the trail of ruined earth back into the forest.

At the tree line, the clots of grassy earth gave way to broken branches and trampled foliage. Though the trees were packed relatively densely, the zinogre had beaten a convenient path between them. At its size, it was clearly no better at carefully navigating the tangle of bushes, vines, and branches than she would be, and its route through the forest made an easy road to follow. She hesitated for a moment at the forest’s edge, then took a steadying breath and forged onward.

The forest was darker than she would have liked. The canopy sheltered the forest floor from most of the moon’s light, with only the occasional pale ribbon or dapple here and there to guide the way, like flickering will-o-wisps that danced with the faint movement of foliage in the breeze. Every few steps she had to pause and peer into the darkness to make sure she was still following the trail. At each pause, she’d strain her ears for any sign of movement from the forest. Each time, she heard nothing but the lazy rustle of tree branches.

Her footsteps were the loudest things in the woods that night, jostling vines and breaking twigs underfoot. If something were stalking her, she would be easier to track than her own prey right now. But zinogres weren’t stalkers, at least from what she had read—they tended to take their prey head-on and simply chase it down without paying attention to stealth or misdirection. She comforted herself with the knowledge that if a zinogre did want to take a bite out of her, she would know it well in advance. She found herself unconsciously fingering the stock of the bowgun slung over her shoulder, and huffed in annoyance as she snatched her hand back. She was not nervous.

Minutes ticked away as Mikayla picked her way through the forest, slowly and cautiously. She wasn’t quite sure how long it took, though time seemed to run together as she inched her way through the darkly shadowed wood. It felt like most of the night had passed by her by the time she finally heard something new whispering to her through the trees. She froze again, crouched, listening. A quiet susurrus. Water? Yes, a brook or stream, it sounded like. And the path she had been following, so conveniently torn down by the passing zinogre, angled toward the sound.

By degrees, the path ahead lightened. Shortly after first hearing the sound of water, she emerged into a broad, flat clearing. The gap in the forest canopy opened the grassy field to the moonlight, giving her darkness-adjusted eyes a clear view across the expanse. Some short distance to her right, she saw the source of the quiet liquid susurrus, a gleaming, burbling spring nestled against an enormous rock formation close to the clearing’s edge. It shone silver in the moonlight, and shallow argent threads drifted away from it, shimmering with their unhurried current.

Piled up on the grass next to the spring lay a dark mound that glinted here and there with a faint iridescence. Streaks of white crossed the mound, pale in the dark. Curious, Mikayla inched toward the silhouetted object, eyes scanning the tree line for movement, lest the zinogre should still be in the area and catch her unawares. As she drew closer, an irregular rumbling noise rolled through the air, and she froze, crouching, breath held, watching the trees. Nothing.

She waited half a minute before releasing her held breath, and the sound did not reoccur. Again she crept forward, belatedly turning her eyes to consider the mound—and watched in stunned silence as a portion of the shape unfurled from it like a great, thick, flattened ribbon and swept through the grass in a slow arc toward her. Mere inches from the touch, she staggered backward with a sharp inhalation and landed on her butt, both hands clamping over her mouth to suppress a squeal that would have brought every predator in the forest down on her. Her blood froze in her veins as the ribbon swept back and forth through the grass only a couple feet away, lazy and unhurried.

It was a tail. And it belonged to a zinogre.

She held her breath as if her life depended on it. And, indeed, it might have. Now that she recognized the contours of its thick, flattened tail, with its horny ridges and sharp points and streak of white fur down the length of the spine, she could make out the rest of the beast in the silhouette of what she had previously taken for a mound of dirt or stone. The streaks of white she had seen were rows of thick fur, nestled between rows of hard, overlapping ridges all along its back and shoulders. The glinting pools of iridescent aquamarine were spans of hard scale along its flanks and particularly its shoulders, which were corded with thick muscle that gave the curled-up monster a hulking appearance even in repose.

It didn’t seem to notice her presence, not even her stumbling collapse into the grass. As she held herself still but feet away from it, its tail swished back and forth and then curled back up against the bulk of its body. It never moved otherwise.

It’s asleep, she thought with a relief that bordered on climax.

With a caution approaching paranoia, Mikayla inched backward through the grass away from the sleeping zinogre. It scarcely stirred, apparently too deep in sleep to be aware of her presence. Once she’d put a good dozen yards between herself and the monster, she pulled herself to her feet and retreated to the tree line, glancing over her shoulder to make sure it hadn’t awoken. It still lay curled up as though she had never drawn within arm’s reach of it, apparently oblivious to her presence. She exhaled a sigh and slipped into the brush, where the dark contours of her armor could blend seamlessly with the shadows.

This was her opportunity. She knew it. She just had to… tamp down the rising sense of panic that was billowing up within the pit of her stomach. It’s almost as though she had never expected to actually find the zinogre out here—which was nonsense, of course. She came here to find it. Right? Right. Never in her wildest dreams would she have envisioned searching for it and not finding it. So here she was, exactly where she wanted to be. Exactly where she planned to be. And yet, right now, staring at that unmoving mound across the clearing, she felt a measure of trepidation she didn’t remember ever feeling in the past.

She drew in a slow, calming breath through her nose. She had planned this out. She was ready for this, wasn’t she? Yes. She had carefully weighed the options, set her path. A few things needed to be adjusted here and there, but the overall goal was the same. Unchanged. She was certain that what she would do tonight would not only solve this poor rancher’s livestock problem, but herald a new era—she would be the one to speak to monsters, to understand them, to get them to understand her. Perhaps one day in the future, people would look back on this moment and mark this as the pivotal event that changed their world forever.

Of course, before such things would come to pass, she had to execute her plan. And she had to do it successfully. Another deep, soothing breath, and she unshouldered her bowgun. She checked the chamber. It was ready, loaded with the special round she had developed on her own, back in her lab at Stark. She hadn’t had an opportunity to test it first, unfortunately—this would be both its test run and its greatest moment. If everything went well. She was sure everything would go well. She had double-checked the formula, triple-checked it. The theory was sound. The plan was good.

She cocked her bowgun and settled herself down into a crouch. The realization that this was a test run as well as a live-fire exercise didn’t escape her. She was certain things would work out fine, but there was still a certain degree of apprehension clutching at the pit of her stomach. Her lips were dry, tongue constantly flicking out to wet them. But her nerves were steady. Her hands shook only ever so slightly as she aimed her bowgun, peered down the scope.

The sleeping zinogre loomed large in the reticule of her weapon. Its bulk filled her vision as she peered through the scope, chest rising and falling with a slow, easy rhythm. Part of her felt bad about doing this now, while it was asleep—but it was the best time to do it, in the end. She was sure she could offer some sort of explanation or apology afterward. At least right now she could be certain of landing her shot. She drew one last breath, held it tightly, aimed her scope at the monster’s shoulder, as close as she could get to its head.

Her finger caressed the trigger. She hesitated a moment more, ensuring her aim was on target. It was. She knew how to do this. It was all in the plan. She bit her lip.

Slowly, with certainty, she squeezed the trigger.

The bowgun fired with a desultory puff that belied the speed of the projectile launched from its muzzle, not to mention the recoil of the weapon as it thumped into Mikayla’s shoulder. Peering through the bowgun’s scope, she saw a puff of dark smoke rise from the zinogre’s shoulder where the round struck home, some small portion of her home-brewed concoction escaping into the air while the bulk of it shot directly into the monster’s bloodstream. It was patterned on the same premise that the more standard gunner’s rounds were, but used a compound purely of her own creation.

As she expected, the zinogre stirred, shaking its horned head back and forth as it rose from slumber. The sting imparted by her shot would have been subtle indeed, enough to bestir the monster but not to arouse it instantly to rage—it would have been no different from the sting of a particularly large horsefly. Yet still it rose, pulling itself to four feet with the sluggish demeanor of one just woken from sleep, and its head turned this way and that upon a powerfully corded neck, looking about for evidence of something that had woken it.

Mikayla crouched in the bush, breath held, bowgun lowered. Afraid that watching the zinogre through her scope would somehow draw its attention to her, she settled her weapon down and watched it from afar; even from here she could catch its confused and curious examination, head twisting this way and that, tail lashing back and forth. It knew something had awakened it, but it knew not what.

It took one step, as if to seek out the source of its discomfort, and faltered. Something in its bearing spoke of distress, even before its tail began to lash about in erratic, urgent sweeps. It shook its head, strode in circles, pawed at the ground with its great, savage claws, layered with heavy scales like gauntlets. A hind leg kicked out, and it stumbled, collapsed onto its side, struggling again to right itself. The effort was futile. The great and monstrous zinogre clawed blindly at the air, thrashing, and curled in onto itself.

Oh, fuck. Had she miscalculated? Had she killed it? Please, no. She had measured everything perfectly, every reagent, every puff of flame. This wasn’t in her plans—she hadn’t intended to kill the monster, or even incapacitate it. Her concoction was intended to cause the creature to understand her, to communicate with her—not to, to, do whatever it was doing to it right now. Where had she gone wrong?

In a fit of frantic pique she rose from her hiding place and, casting her bowgun aside, stumbled forward from the bush toward the twitching, writhing zinogre. It lay on its side, twisting and squirming as though it were in its death throes. What could she do for it? She was no medic—she didn’t even know what was wrong, what might have been wrong. Everything had been perfect. She had checked over and over again. Where had she made a mistake?

As she drew near the thrashing monster, she slowed; its unpredictable movements would have been as much a danger to her as any deliberately aimed claw-swipe. In the darkness she could not make out much beyond its general silhouette, either, and so she found herself distressingly cut off from the monster even as it lay there before her. She could not know what was happening to it without getting within arm’s reach. But drawing within arm’s reach would cause her more harm than good, right now.

As she equivocated, the thrashing of the silhouetted monster grew still, curled in up upon itself like a dead spider. Mikayla felt a knot in her stomach. This wasn’t in the plan. This wasn’t what she had intended. She had wanted dialogue, understanding, cooperation—not death. What mistake had she made? Blindly she staggered toward the now-still body of the zinogre, for what reason she knew not what. What would she do with it? Bury it? Mourn it?

Mere half a dozen feet away, as she stumbled blindly toward the fallen monster, it stirred anew. At first a jerk, as from an electrical shock, and then slow, deliberate movements. She froze in place, doing nothing to interrupt its extended rise. Something about it seemed… off, though she couldn’t quite place it in the darkness. Something seemed not quite right, not quite aligned with all of the illustrations and diagrams she had studied in her free time. Of course, she had never seen a live zinogre before tonight, but surely they would resemble the illustrations?

As she stood and watched, frozen in place, it rose. And rose, and rose. On two legs, the monster stood upright, stumbling slightly as though uneasy with its own bulky, top-heavy physique. It stood… upright. That wasn’t right. The zinogre was a quadrupedal creature. It didn’t even have the ability to stand on two legs for more than a few seconds. But this one was.

It appeared to be as confused as she was, for it stood there silent and all but still for a few pregnant seconds. In time its head swiveled left and right, and one hand rose—as her own hand might have risen—to clutch at its head. It took a step, stumbled once, then found its balance. She watched as it found itself, stood upright, stood proud. Its shoulders rolled, dark against the brightness of the moonlight night.

She shifted back half a step, heel of her boot sliding through the grass in an unconscious preparation to flee. But even that subtle gesture drew the zinogre’s attention from the corner of its vision; its great horned head swiveled to the side in a slow sweep, and electric blue eyes fixed upon her. A rumbling growl rose from its chest, so deep that she felt it roll through her body as much as she heard it. The thrum stole her breath, and by instinct she reached for a bowgun that was no longer at her side. Her knife was gone, too, stowed in her pack. She had nothing but her hands and feet with which to face this towering behemoth; it stood easily eight feet tall on its hind legs, maybe even more, and if she curled herself into a ball she probably would be about as large as its pectorals.

It turned to face her. Even in the darkness, the definition of its broad chest was apparent to her, with sparkling iridescent turquoise scales catching the moonlight; they stretched from shoulders to abdomen, split in the middle by a thick ruff of shaggy white fur that streaked straight down its middle from throat to groin. Involuntarily, her eyes followed the plunging white line to its termination, where a large, scaly pouch lay close to the monster’s groin; even obscured by shadow, its prodigious size was apparent, as was the tight sac dangling beneath it.

Her eyes shot back up to its—his—face with a flush of heat in her face and shoulders that warded off the nighttime chill. His lupine snout was trimmed with horny ridges along the jaw that terminated in a short protrusion almost like a beard, and a pair of thick forward-facing horns loomed over his forehead. There was something a bit unusual about it that she couldn’t quite put her finger on at the moment. It was clearly recognizable from the illustrations she’d seen, but its facial structure seemed ever so slightly different in a way that she couldn’t quantify.

It took a step forward, and gave her something else to worry about. That wasn’t in the illustrations, either. She took a step back in sync with the monster’s forward stride, though his longer legs put him closer to her than she created distance between them. Zinogres were quadrupeds, not bipeds. But this one was standing in front of her like any man might. Any… very, very tall, very muscular man with shoulders like ramparts and scales and ridges covering its body. And she was almost certain that it wasn’t like this before she shot it with her special compound. There was no way she had done this.

Was there?

He was still coming, though his pace remained deliberate and self-assured. The monster was not hurrying himself to close with her, as though he reasoned he had little to fear from her. Mikayla was afraid that he might be right. Though she backed up one step for each one he took, he was gaining on her. She held up her hands, palms out, in a gesture to forestall him. “W-wait. Wait. I’m sure we can figure this out. I’m not here to hurt you!” She licked at suddenly dry lips. “Honest.”

He paused mid-stride, taloned toes curling into the ground for stability. Was that a furrow to the great beast’s brow? His eyes searched her face, and she swore she saw something like recognition in them. Something else, too. She didn’t find his face half as easy to read as a human’s or even a felyne’s, but she was surprised to discover that she could read it, at least a little. Some of the gestures were… familiar.

Her pulse quickened. Did he truly understand her? “See, um, I just wanted to come to talk to you, and, um, you’re a monster, I mean a zinogre, so it’s not like you speak our language, so I thought, what if you could at least understand it, then we could sort of talk and we wouldn’t have to be killing you all the time when we had disagreements, see?” Earlier, she’d rehearsed a very elegant and stately-sounding speech to give to the monster. This was not it. “And, um, I came up with something that I thought would help you to understand, um, the theory is all kind of complicated and I doubt you’re interested, but—I promise, I didn’t expect this to happen.” She gestured, indicating his body. “It was only supposed to make you understand, not… change anything else!”

He looked down at himself. Hands lifted, claws curled into fists then uncurled. The furrow in his brow deepened, and then something seemed to register in his eyes. They shot back up to her, and she saw the muscles in his shoulders tense. His lips curled back, exposing carnivorous fangs, and another growl rose from the depths of his chest. She was certain he understood her that time, at least the gist of things—and he was not pleased.

“Oh, shit.” She broke and ran.

She had left her bowgun in the brush. Dumb move. But if she could reach it before he got to her, she could at least get some sleep shot loaded and knock him out long enough to hightail it and plan her next move. She raced through the grass toward the dark wall of the tree line, while behind her the zinogre’s growl grew in volume.

Her only saving grace was that he did not instantly launch himself into pursuit. She had a good lead on him before she heard the telltale thumping sounds of heavy footfalls closing in from behind; she pushed herself that much harder, arms pumping, not daring to look behind her. When she reached the tree line she practically threw herself into the brush, scrambling for her pack and discarded bowgun. She wasted precious seconds fumbling in the dark, and when her hands closed around the cold metal of the weapon lying on the ground, a profound wave of relief washed over her. Now she just had to get her sleep shot out of her bandolier and loaded and she could—

A deafening crash behind her, and the creaking protest of the trees, announced the zinogre’s arrival. He couldn’t fit through the trees like she could, but as she discovered to her chagrin, he didn’t need to. One long arm thrust into the brush, and his claws curled into the back of her armor, taking a fistful of it in a powerful grip. He hauled her bodily out of her hiding place, lifting her off her feet and dragging her back out into the moonlit clearing. With a desultory yank, he spun her about so that she faced him, bared fangs and electric eyes bearing down on her.

Still holding her bowgun in a death grip, the only thing she could think to do was try to get her sleep shot loaded and fire from the hip. One bullet was already in her hand, ready to enter the chamber, when he seized the barrel of the bowgun and wrenched it free from her as though she were a recalcitrant child unwilling to give up a toy. With effortless ease, he turned to fling it like a stick into the distance; she watched with mounting horror as it spun through the air like a boomerang, and landed with the sound of splashing water.

“I’m sorry!” she croaked. She couldn’t think to do anything else. She didn’t even have her knife handy, and she would break her own hand if she tried to strike him unarmed. He clamped one of his own hands around her upper arm, the enormous paw covered in a gauntlet-like array of plates and ridges. Running was out of the question, unless she could tear her own arm out of its socket and leave it behind. “Please, you have to understand—“

He shoved her backward, and the impact against a tree trunk knocked the wind out of her lungs. Coughing and wheezing, she struggled for the right words. That was the only thing she could come up with any more. Overcoming him physically was impossible. Outrunning him, evading him was impossible. But she had given him some degree of understanding and intuitive knowledge, hadn’t she? “W-wait, please—I can… I can make it up to you, I promise…”

The zinogre paused, fangs still bared, but the momentary lapse in his angry manhandling of her body filled her with incalculable relief. He was still sensible—maybe still even reasonable. She stumbled on, spilling words as fast as she could form them in her mind. “This whole thing was to, to solve a problem without having to, um, hurt you, you see, and obviously it’s worked, mostly, so we could come to an understanding and, um, I could… could do something for you that we could trade, um, for an agreement…” She hadn’t the slightest clue what she could do for him, or how she could make up accidentally turning him into this… bipedal version of himself. She was still trying to process the reality that she had. She half expected to wake up aboard the airship to find it was just a dream. But she was certain she could probably figure something out as soon as he stopped shaking her around like a doll.

A low rumble spilled from his chest, and tentatively, the bared fangs receded as the animal fury drained from his eyes. She doubted he could speak, else he’d have done so already, but he clearly understood her intuitively. The realization that her plan (at least in that respect) had really worked gave her a little thrill that lightened the dread hanging over the moment. He still had her arm in a vice grip, after all, and she was still thoroughly subject to his mercy. But at least he seemed willing to consider the possibility of granting it.

His eyes fell from her face, then traced along her body thoughtfully. His nostrils flared and he scented the air; his head dipped closer as he snuffled along her hair. She coached herself to hold still, and closed her eyes. If he wanted to sniff at her for a few minutes, that was fine by her. She could catch her breath, wait for her pounding heart to return to a less exhausting pace. She flinched when she felt his claws in her hair, but swallowed hard and resisted the urge to squirm; he was just testing her out, perhaps. Animals did that sometimes. And what were monsters but particularly dangerous animals?

Another rumble prompted her to open her eyes; she found him looking down at her face. She tried to smile, weak as it felt. “Y-yes, see? We’re, um, all in this together. Now, um… we’ll have to try to work out exactly how to come to our agreement, and I promise I’ll figure out a way to reverse this, um, thing that happened to you, if you don’t like it…” She trailed off. The zinogre was looking at her oddly. There was something intense in his eyes, and for a moment she’d feared she had made him angry again.

Then his free claw fell from her hair to her shoulder, and from there trailed to curl around the weight of her right breast. She sucked in a breath in shock, held it, as the monster slowly pawed around her breast, claws tracing back and forth across the top of her armor. The edge of his thumb claw passed directly over the peak, and though the armor shielded her from its sharp edge, the pressure against her hidden nipple shot a jolt down her spine.

She laughed, involuntarily, awkwardly. Heat was rising in her cheeks again. “Y-yes, that’s… that’s me,” she stammered, lifting a hand to place on his wrist as if she had any chance of pushing him away. She gave his arm a nudge, nonetheless; it was unmovable, but he might have gotten the hint from the body language.

He did, but he didn’t seem to like it. His hand flexed, claws dimpling her armor inward against her breast. “H-hey, that’s… sensitive.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “I promise, I’m not trying to run away or anything. We just need to find out what, um, arrangements…” She trailed off as, to her wonder, his hand did relax its grip. Yet her relief was short-lived: he merely trailed his hand down a few inches, hooked the tips of his claws into the loose mesh covering her abdomen, and pulled it open as if it were a curtain.

Broad, tattered scraps of mesh came off in his hand, baring her midriff even more than it already was. He casually shook the ruined threads into the grass while Mikayla stood there, stiff as a board, nostrils flared and breath held. Her heart was thumping in her chest again, and it was all she could do to not yell at him in protest. The words very nearly made it out before she caught her tongue in her teeth and choked them back. All that came out was a whine.

Again he traced fingers over her breasts. One claw followed the arc of her armor there from her bust to where it looped around the back of her neck. She drew in a breath, out of necessity as much as to steady herself, and ventured, hesitantly, “I… I don’t think this is a good arrangement, you know, you’re… um, you’re very…” Big. Strong. Dangerous. Monstrous. And, well... not human.

The zinogre’s eyes shifted to her face, and his head dipped, the shadow of his horns falling over his lupine features and leaving his eyes as pools of luminescent blue in the darkness. As he met her gaze, he dug his claws beneath the loop of armor behind her neck and, in one pull, sliced it clean in half. The wrap of scale-sewn cloth instantly fell slack around her breasts, and her free hand shot up to catch it before it fell away.

He was faster. His hand caught her wrist, enveloping it completely, and dragged it away. She bit her lip as the loosened armor slumped, no longer supported around her neck, and though it didn’t fall away from her entirely, it slackened enough to bare one pert, pale breast to the cold night air. With both arms held, now, there was precious little she could do even to cover herself up, and any further squirming would only unwind the rest of her top and send it tumbling to the ground. His eyes fell from her face to where her breast lay bare to the moonlight, its peak already capped with a stiff nub from the chill. Another rumble from his chest traveled down his arms into hers.

Mikayla bit her lip that much harder. She had no idea what to say, or do. She didn’t imagine that he was going to hurt her, at least not on purpose, but darker possibilities, unwilling to coalesce clearly, lurked in the shadowed periphery of her thoughts. But regardless of what he wanted to do, he would do it; her opportunities for diverting that river were desperately limited. Yet for all his casual dominance of the situation, he was taking his sweet time in acting—his eyes roamed over her back and forth, in fits and bursts, lingering here or there for long seconds before sliding to some other part of her body. It was as if he were discovering something anew, thinking, ruminating on it while he held her at his mercy. She would have paid every last zenny in her possession to know what he was thinking.

She needn’t have bothered. At last his eyes fell upon her bared breast, already peppered with goosebumps from the cold. His eyes glinted, and a tremor ran down her spine at the sight. He jerked her by the arms, dragging her closer as his muzzle descended toward the modest peak. “Oh, no, no, I don’t think that’s—oohh—“ The heat of his breath washed over her skin half a second before the even warmer lash of his tongue drew a wet, wide stroke straight across the peak of her breast. The rough texture of his tongue caught and tugged at her stiffened nipple, and a wash of startling sensation ricocheted within her; she fumbled over her protests, which collapsed into a groan reduplicated when his tongue doubled back for a second stroke.

Then a third. And a fourth. And… she lost count. Each wet, hot contact jolted her; her back tried to hold itself stiff, but every slurp made her shake just a little more. Slow drags of his tongue turned to lapping, then turned to suction, then shifted back again. Her head lolled back; her eyes closed, clenching tightly shut at first, then fluttering half-open, then closing again. The monster’s body heat seemed to soak into her through her breast, that point of contact marking the point of transfer; soon she felt very hot, her cheeks and shoulders and breasts flushed red, and the goosebumps were no longer from the cold. Distantly, she realized her toes had curled into tight balls within her boots. Every time she tried to uncurl them, a fresh shiver of sensation tightened them back.

There was something stirring in the back of her head, something behind the sensation. A recognizance, an awareness of something, but she couldn’t bring it into resolution through the swirling tempest that was her mind. The zinogre—a monster!—was having his way with her, and all she could bestir herself to do was gasp and choke on her own shallow breaths and squirm trembling in his grasp. This was an outrage! Wasn’t it? It should be. She thought. Why, she wasn’t able to put her finger on. Even as she struggled to remind herself that this amorous beast was being very rude, his claws released her arms; one traveled down to curl about her hip, and the other slipped between her shoulder blades.

It was almost—but not quite—a release. Though no longer held taut like a doll, there was still precious little opportunity for her to move. Not that she tried to squirm her way out of his grasp. No, that would be a waste, wouldn’t it? A waste of energy, that was. No point in trying. He was just too strong, and, and… well, she might upset him if she used this little grace he gave her to flee. She found her hands gripping his horns a few seconds later as his tongue continued to lash at her breast. She didn’t recall putting them there, nor seizing the horns so tightly. But since they were there already…

A sharpness touched the bare skin of her side, just above her belt: his searching claws, tracing blindly the boundary between flesh and clothing. A little more pressure and those killing talons would leave more than pale red lines on her skin; she struggled to hold herself still, not to twist away from them. His claws roamed the edge there, back and forth, until, satisfied, he thrust them beneath the waist of her pants.

Her back arched as the cool, hard surface of his claws pressed against her skin beneath the scale and leather garment. Had he been a human, his intention would have been clear—and somehow, she didn’t think that he being a monster meant that his intentions would be any different. A burbling well of sudden anxiety boiled up in her gut, and she dared to pull one hand away from its grip on his horn to wrap her fingers half around his descending wrist. “Aah—I don’t think this is—“

She felt his snarl against the flesh of her breast before she heard the low growl simmering in the back of his throat. Fangs, hard as his claws. She froze, goosebumps rising afresh along her exposed skin. “I-it’s just that—“ she began again, before his growl spiked in volume, and in an instant what remained of her protest died on her lips. But by then it was too late: she felt his wrist flexing and tensing beneath her hand, and a heartbeat later he dug his claws into her clothing and pulled hard.

For all their sturdy construction, neither her belt nor her pants fared any better than the light weave of mesh that once draped her torso. The leather split finely along the lines of his claws, a wide gash opening from waist to lower thigh where he cleaved it apart. He was ruining everything she wore! Her mind lurched to how she would explain the ruination of her gifted armor when she felt herself topple backward. With a yelp she flailed for support, hands finding the zinogre’s horns once again as her feet flew out from under her. A rush of movement later, something cool and damp and prickly pressed into her back. Grass. Still dazed from the sudden jolt, she only dimly caught sight of the monster taking a handful of her pants between his claws—the flap that he had ripped open moments ago—and tear it sideways across her legs. Great strips of material came off like tissue paper.

She was exposed. Tattered fragments of her pants remained tucked into her boots, but the rest of it was gone, from the knees up. Her eyes widened, and heat rushed anew into her face even as the chill of the night swept in between her bared thighs. He was serious about this. She didn’t know if that terrified her or… or something else. No, she was terrified. But she was… something else, too. “I…” A feeble urge to say something, to seize control of the situation with words, pulled a single syllable from her lips before all desire to do so fell away in the face of the dawning realization of what lay above her.

He took her legs, one in each hand, and prised them wide. Mikayla’s breath grew shallow, her eyes slid closed. She couldn’t see what awaited her in the dark of night anyway; what monstrous fate lay between the zinogre’s thighs was bathed in impenetrable shadow. She wasn’t certain she wanted to know, however much her imagination now ran wild, mixing fear and anticipation both as the beast loomed above her. His breath flowed across her bared breasts, her flushed cheeks.

It didn’t seem real. Not in a hundred years would she have imagined this to be her fate this night. She had never even so much as touched a man—not intimately, not like this. And now, all of the sudden, something unnatural and bestial crouched above her, ready to, to… she should be screaming, or fighting. Something. Protesting her fate, rather than submitting meekly to it, as if nothing were the matter. But she… didn’t want to. As afraid as she was, she felt, perhaps foolishly, that the zinogre meant her no harm.

Heat wafted between her parted thighs, sending a contrary chill up her spine. Rough, scaly hide brushed the insides of her legs as he descended upon her, and the first ephemeral tickles of the monster’s ruff of coarse fur danced against her belly. Gripping her by the ankles, he pulled her close, dragging her along the grass with a sharp tug that brought the damp flesh of her labia up against something hot with life. Her hands tightened around his horns, her eyes clenched ever harder. She was wet. She could feel it. It wasn’t right, was it? It didn’t matter.

He was wet, too, that hot press against her slick already with something slick and dribbling, something that drooled down onto her own skin and matted itself in the once-neat thatch of hair on her loins. His hips shifted, the flesh dragged between her folds. It was heavy atop her, and icy needles of uncertainty stabbed at her gut. Could she even do this? Was he going to kill her accidentally? Did he even care?

He didn’t. When the first stroke came, it came with confident force, unburdened by any suggestion of self-restraint. For a fleeting moment she felt her folds pried by the leading wedge of his tapered flesh, but what precious little warning that afforded her was not enough to brace herself for what followed. A sharp shock of tearing pain blossomed between her thighs, and she bit her lower lip to choke back a whimper; her hands grew white beneath the clenched grip she held on his horns.

A guttural growl rolled in his throat, and he pushed again, harder, a sharp thrust that plowed her into the ground. Her inner flesh parted around him as if unwilling, forced to conform to the contours of his invading spire. She felt full, a dull throb echoing in her loins behind the sharper pain of her despoliation. And he kept coming, kept filling, his body sinking down atop hers until at the last she lay wedged between her lover and the world. His scales rasped her legs and thighs even as his fur tickled at her chest.

By the time he had bottomed out inside her, she was half afraid that he was going to split her in two. The heavy, smooth-scaled contours of his balls came to rest against her skin, and for a blessed moment the zinogre was content to hold still and allow her to ache and groan without further molestation. But the reprieve was short-lived. Buried within her, his hands slid from her ankles to her hips, as if he needed anything more than the sheer weight of his body to pin her to the ground. She was perversely grateful for the sting of sharp claws as they squeezed her hips, inasmuch as the pricks distracted her attention from the throbbing between her legs.

He drew back, slipped half out, and the instant relief from the insistent pressure came with a bizarre and unsolicited echo of emptiness and disappointment. She couldn’t even be upset when he thrust again, no matter how much it hurt. It was slow and deliberate at first, and her heels kicked straight up into the air out of reflex. There was no time to examine her reactions, for he was drawing back and thrusting again before she could make sense of her own thoughts—and then again scarcely before she could react to that. Then he was going fast, with long, powerful strokes that drew him halfway out before bottoming out inside her again.

Her flailing legs, kicking at the air, sought purchase on his own hips. His body was broad and muscular, much wider than her, and her heels fumbled at his sides for long seconds before they at last found some measure of stability wedged against his hide. He did not relent, and what few precious seconds he gave her of relief from his rhythmic rutting was but a moment for him to drag his drooling snout against the side of her face as he savored her body. His tongue was wet, rough, raspy. Exotic. Not that she had ever been licked before, by man or beast, but she was certain that a human would have been nothing like it.

Yet for all his insistence, which never abated, each thrust seemed a little less agonizing than the last. Was she getting used to it? Her wetness slicked his erection, and he too was spilling his own sticky lubrication into and around her; she could hear it each time he thrust, the wet shick of the backstroke and then a squelching squirt as his balls slapped her rear. Still every muscle in her loins ached, and still pooled tears wetted the corners of her eyes, but she could feel something other than the sting of her defloration and the abusive thickness of his girth.

It felt… good. Exciting, even. As her fear that he would kill her faded like a bad dream—if he were going to rip her apart, it would have happened already—a giddy sense of elation filled her. Had anyone in the history of the world ever done this? There was a real terror in being pinned beneath a slavering beast, but she was doing it, she was enduring it; she was going to survive it, even. She realized, with a stomach-twisting thrill, that she was enjoying this.

She hadn’t realized she’d laughed aloud until the zinogre paused, if ever so briefly, to fix his eyes onto her face; but there it was, echoing in her memory, as though it came from someone else’s mouth. Heat filled her cheeks, and for a moment she was afraid he thought she was laughing at him. She thought to apologize, but when she opened her mouth, the only word that came out was: “Go.”

He went. A fresh growl thrummed his chest and shook her body beneath him, and he laid into her with a passionate fury. Instantly she regretted her cockiness, but there was no time left to do anything but dig in and hang on. He had incredible endurance, but he seemed now not to be prolonging the rut but fighting for release, for climax. She squeezed her eyes shut again. She could ride it out. She had gotten this far. And it still felt good. Better than before, even, now with how sloppy-wet she was. She was even beginning to relax.

That was what she thought, at least, when something began prickling at her loins, where his flesh met hers. It was distant at first, but grew more insistent with each thrust, at first a formless sensation that something was different or wrong, and then a realization that the thrusts were stretching her more than they had. Confusion wafted through her hazy mind. It only seemed to happen at the very beginning and end of each stroke, when he was bottoming out inside her. And it grew ever more insistent and intense.

The base of his erection was… swelling. Mikayla realized with a shock that this monster, this zinogre, must share a certain part of anatomy with certain domestic animals—is this why they called zinogres “thunder wolves”? What had been a giddy, if strained, brace against her monstrous lover shifted to worry. “Waaaaait,” she wheezed in between thrusts. “I… I may have… oh, fu… made a misssstake…”

All she got in response was a growl—and a particularly forceful thrust that the zinogre held inside her, balls-deep, as that swelling knot strained against the insides of her body. She was… stretchier… inside than out. It hurt less here. But she feared what would happen when he drew back. “Wait,” she said again. “I can’t…”

Her protestations were cut off by a squeak as the zinogre jerked his hips back, and took her hips along with it. The bulge of his knot inside her had swollen so thickly that it couldn’t even pull out of her again. She was tied to this beast. For how long? Was he done? She was familiar enough with animals to know a little bit about anatomy but was completely clueless on the details of their mating habits.

He was not done—but he did not withdraw from her. Instead, his long strokes became short, gyrating grinds back and forth, sharp little jerks as his cock jostled inside her, his knot aching at her woefully-stretched insides. She could do nothing but hold on and close her eyes as the zinogre rutted her. Wrapped around him, with his claws on her hips, she realized that he was close to climax. She didn’t know how, exactly—a shift in the rhythm of his grinding, something in his breath, something in his grip—but she knew it was going to happen a split second before it did. She tensed herself, braced against the moment of truth.

It came with a snarl so intense that for a heartbeat she thought he was going to eat her. He bucked hard against her hips, slamming her into the ground, and then held still; his scaly balls tightened sharply against her skin, and then she felt the coursing flow of the monster’s seed shooting through his erection before it sprayed powerfully into her loins. It came and came, pulse after thick pulse, until there was no room left and a few errant squirts of it spurted from the seal his knot made with her folds.

Then, for the first time in she wasn’t sure how long, there was stillness and quiet. She felt his heartbeat against her chest, his breath on her hair. Her own heart was racing, and every nerve in her body seemed to be on high alert. Her skin tingled and she felt dizzy. Had she climaxed, or was it just the confusion and intensity of the moment all piled up on a body sorely unprepared for it? She had no idea. It didn’t matter right now. She was alive. Now she just needed to convince him not to eat her afterward. Her eyes opened into slits.

The zinogre stirred, and drew his head back enough to stare down at her face. She wasn’t an expert on monster body language or facial expressions, but she could have sworn he looked smug. Lazily, then, he propped himself up with his claws pinning her lower body to the ground, and pulled against the knot still sealed inside her. It didn’t want to come out. His nostrils flared, and he pulled harder; Mikayla felt the swollen flesh straining at her entrance, and her eyes opened wide. “Wait, you should… definitely wait,” she begged breathlessly. “It’ll probably go back to normal… eventually, right?” But he seemed to be ignoring her—or perhaps he didn’t understand her, or didn’t care—and simply kept pulling. His grip on her body tightened and the muscles of his thighs bulged with effort. A sharp, stretching pain began to blossom in her loins, and stupidly she began pushing at the zinogre, too, as though she could stop him from doing what he was about to do.

The blossoming pain suddenly came into sharp focus that rippled through her body. In the distance, she heard herself manage to say an aborted, “Oh, shit—“ before she heard a loud, wet pop, felt the splash of hot fluid over her legs, and fell into darkness.

* * *

A dull, throbbing ache was the first thing Mikayla was aware of, and it was that sensation that hooked her and dragged her, fitful, into the waking world. She stirred without opening her eyes, and even that movement ached; her body from waist to knees felt like it had been beaten with a club. Warmth surrounded her, and a weight pressed her down into comfortable, if not exquisite, softness below. A blanket, a pillow, and a cot.

She wiggled her toes against the heavy blanket. Someone had removed her boots. From there bloomed the realization that someone had removed her everything: she lay naked beneath the blanket. She might have been put off were she not so grateful for the sliver of comfort her bed afforded her now—or so distracted by the throb in her thighs.

Where was she? How had she gotten here? Tentatively, she crept through the hypnogogic fog for answers. What had she been doing last night? She had been—

She sucked in a gasp and sat bolt upright in bed in spite of the ache, eyes snapping open. The blanket fell away from her bare breasts, and the relative chill of the surrounding air clung to her skin as the blanket’s heat escaped. “No, no, that couldn’t—“ The zinogre came rushing into her memory, standing like a man, tall and powerful, holding her in his claws. And then he…

She pushed the blanket away further, dared to peer between her legs. The thatch of dark hair between her legs lay matted with dried fluid. The insides of her thighs, too, bore smears of dried seed interrupted here and there with thin streaks of blood. Heat and color rose into her cheeks and neck again as she stared at the aftermath; so it wasn’t a dream.

She didn’t know what to do. Perhaps there was nothing to do. Her eyes drifted away from the evidence of her deflowering (and the thought brought with it a pang of guilt and shame simultaneous with a perverse pride that certainly no one had ever lost their maidenhood to a monster before) to her surroundings. She was in a spacious tent, large enough to sleep four people comfortably if they didn’t mind being in arm’s reach of one another, and tall enough to stand upright in without stooping. The flaps on the front and rear of the tent were tied securely, and daylight filtered in through the seams. She could hear a gentle breeze in the trees outside.

I’m at a base camp. Someone had brought her here after she had fainted. The question of who answered itself soon enough, when she spied two piles of clothing sitting atop one of the other cots in the tent. Atop one was a neatly folded letter on crisp paper; with no small effort and a long groan, she pulled herself to her feet to retrieve it.

You shouldn’t go prowling alone at night! At least bring a palico!

I brought all of your things except your bowgun. I couldn’t find it, sorry.

A shame about your armor. Please accept a complimentary set of clothing!

Fee: 15,000z

Payable at any Guild counter.

Good luck!

So one of the felynes that worked at the base camp brought her back. But that fee—fifteen thousand zenny? She’d rather be here than naked in the wilderness, she supposed, but that was an exorbitant amount. Still, the offered reward was three times that, so she supposed she could spare it once she got back to Stark.

The letter had been sitting atop a pile of ruined clothing and armor: whoever brought her back had made a valiant effort to fold it neatly, but her chestpiece had been shredded into tatters and the pants fared little better. Only her boots, propped up next to her backpack beneath the cot, had survived intact to any degree. There was only so much one could do with a pile of ruined cloth and scale.

The other set of clothing was, however, in fine shape, albeit not reinforced for combat and singularly bland in color. She dressed gingerly; the tunic was a little baggy and the pants a little long, likely tailored for a man, but they were comfortable and it was better than walking around with last night’s shame clearly visible between her legs.

She stuffed the remains of her armor into her backpack along with the bill—I’ll worry about that later—and stepped outside with her gear slung over her shoulder. She squinted her eyes against the light; the sun was already high in the sky, and the trees surrounding the base camp offered little shade against it. The camp itself was tidy and neatly provisioned, with a scattering of tents and a set of sturdy storage chests bracketing them. An array of carving racks delineated the far end of camp, while closer to the center lay a stone-ringed firepit filled with cold ash.

The only other person in the camp that she could see was a felyne perched atop one of the supply chests, occupied with mending a fishing net. Absorbed in his work, he only looked up when Mikayla cleared her throat, but then he lifted both paws and waved at her enthusiastically.

“Good meowning! Well, for you, at least,” he said, glancing up at the afternoon sun. “I’ve been up for hours.”

Mikayla cleared her throat again. “Good, um, afternoon. How long was I asleep? What time is it exactly?”

“Oh, I’m not sure. You were asleep when I arrived at camp, which was, let’s see, I did one, two, three…” The felyne trailed off as he mentally recounted his tasks, tapping on his fingers back and forth. “I suppose it’s a few hours after noon. But don’t worry! The prowler who brought you back left me a note so I knew to let you rest. Those meownsters can be dangerous!”

Mikayla flushed, and cleared her throat a third time. “Yes. Yes, they’re quite a handful. I, um, seem to have left behind my bowgun when I was, er, fighting, and it wasn’t with my other things. Could you point me in the direction where I was, ah, found?” Of course the felyne would have no idea what she was actually doing when she fainted. She hoped. Now, the prowler that brought her back, on the other hand…

“Are you still feeling unwell? You’re quite red!”

“Yes,” she answered too quickly. “I am perfectly fine. Just a little… embarrassed at losing my fight, that’s all.” She forced a smile, too wide.

“Mmm, okay. Don’t worry, all sorts of hunters come back on the carts. You just have to get back on your paws and give it another go! Oh, nya, you wanted to know where it was…” He set his fishing net aside and hopped down from the chest, then popped it open to dig out a rolled scrap of paper. He unrolled it atop the chest, revealing a map of the area with what Mikayla assumed was the base camp prominently displayed in one corner. “Let’s see, I don’t know exactly, but the note the prowler left said you were about in this area.” He stabbed at a spot on the map that looked maybe half an hour’s hike distant, if Mikayla’s map-reading was correct. “There’s a brook just down that way, and you can follow it all the way down, nya.”

“Thank you.” She was antsy to get her bowgun back in her hands—it was heavily modified, and she had put a lot of trial and error into figuring out how to get it functional after the first couple of times she broke it trying to improve it. She wasn’t… exactly sure what she did to it, now, so she’d be starting over from scratch with a new bowgun. She’d rather face the prospect of running into the zinogre again than have to give up on it. “I’ll be heading that way now. Um… when you see your prowler friend again, let him know I’ll get that bill paid as soon as I can.” That was technically true.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay? Do you need some help? I’m sure one of the prowlers will be back soon, or another hunter—“

“No! I mean, no. I’ll be fine. Thank you. I’ll just sneak in, grab my bowgun, and get out.”

“Um.”

Mikayla flashed what she hoped was a confident smile. “I’ll be fine. I promise! But thank you. Now, uh, I really must be going.” She was already shuffling away from the felyne, who was clearly taken off-guard by her sudden insistence on leaving Now and Alone.

But despite his visible concern, he wasn’t going to stop her. “Okay. Be careful, nya! Don’t come back on a cart again!”

She hurried down the path he had pointed out; the heat in her cheeks and neck didn’t subside until she came across the brook he had mentioned, and even then it didn’t completely vanish. Though she had dodged one bullet, she found herself now faced with the prospect of returning to the… scene of the crime. Would the zinogre still be there? If he was still in the area, could she sneak past him? If she couldn’t, would he…

Her stomach clenched. The whole event still had a haze of unreality around it. If it weren’t for the physical marks left on her, she would have thought it was all a particularly vivid dream. She was trying not to think too deeply about it—it hadn’t really sunk in, she knew, and she wasn’t sure she wanted it to sink in. But the hike was long and uneventful, with nothing but the babbling of the water and the occasional chirp of birds or rustle of wind to occupy her senses, and she couldn’t help but keep returning to the memories of being gripped in the dark, of the heat, the rustle of fur, the sliding tickle of rough scales and hide…

She sucked in a sudden, shallow breath and closed her eyes. Her heart was suddenly racing. It had happened. He had been rough, careless, insistent, and she had liked it. She ought to have hated it. Right? Been angry at him. She tried to conjure it up, pull some thread of rage from the pit of her belly, but all she could think about was how powerful his hands were, how effortlessly he held her down. And how could she be angry at him? She was the one who… changed him. Unintentionally, yes. And she was very sorry about it. But she couldn’t blame him for perhaps being upset and handling her roughly.

She realized belatedly that she had stopped walking. Both hands fell to her stomach, and she opened her eyes to stare at the flowing brook without focusing on anything in particular. She stood there for a long time, her thoughts a haze. She tried not to concentrate; whenever she began to focus her thoughts, they resolved inexorably around the shadowy visage of her monstrous lover.

Lover. What an odd thought to have. It wasn’t exactly right. Right? It’s not like she had a relationship with a monster. No relationship at all. She might not ever even see him again. But there the thought just popped into her head, whenever she thought for more than two seconds about it.

She wet her lips and forced herself to walk. One foot in front of the other, however slowly. She could focus on that, at least, and for a time she did, clearing her mind of anything beyond the simple sounds of the forest and the effort of navigating the riverbank. She had almost forgotten why she was walking in the first place when she finally lifted her eyes and came to a stop right at the edge of a wide clearing. The brook curved toward a rocky formation at the far edge of the clearing, at the base of which a large spring lay glistening in the sunlight.

It looked different in the day, but she recognized the spring. Her bowgun would be there, at the bottom. Ugh. She hated swimming.

She hadn’t taken more than a dozen steps toward the spring when she realized that what she had thought was just an oddly-colored rock was not. It stirred, lifted its head, looked directly at her from across the clearing. She was too far away to see his expression clearly, but she instantly knew who he was.

The zinogre. Her zinogre. Whatever she had done to him the previous night had not reversed, and he lay sunning atop one of the rocks still in the rough shape of a man. She froze, hoping he hadn’t seen her, but as he pulled himself to his feet with a languid stretch and picked his way down to the edge of the spring with fluid, powerful grace, she knew it was far too late.

She could run. She should run. She probably couldn’t outrun him, but she was at the edge of the forest, so she could possibly hide. Or climb a tree. Could zinogres climb? It didn’t matter, because while he clearly saw her, he didn’t give chase. In fact, all he did was squat at the edge of the spring, arms resting on his knees as if it were the most natural pose in the world and not something that had only become physically possible for him in the last twenty-four hours.

She watched him, but he did nothing but watch her back. Was he not going to molest her this time? She took one step forward, ready to bolt if he showed the slightest sign of coming after her, but he remained as patient as ever. One step became two, and two became three, and soon she was approaching with steady care, muscles tense and ready to spring.

As she drew closer, she could make out his expression more clearly. She was still not sure if she was reading it right, but his electric blue eyes glinted with what she would have sworn was… amusement? Smugness? She was more indignant than frightened, now. It was like he knew exactly what he had done, and exactly what she was thinking. Maybe he was smarter than she gave him credit for. Smart and strong. Instinctively, her eyes dipped between his splayed legs, and her breath caught in her throat. A thick, scaly sheath lay close to his loins, and despite the lack of an erection or any flesh at all emerging from it at the moment, it seemed very… prominent. As did the tight, large balls hanging beneath the sheath. She had that inside her… no, best not to think about that right now. Red-faced, her eyes lifted to his face. He hadn’t missed her detour.

She wet her lips and cleared her throat. “I’m just here for my bowgun,” she said slowly and clearly, as if he could understand her. Maybe he could—to make sure, she pantomimed firing a bowgun and then pointed at the spring. “I’ll just… take it and be on my way. No need for anything… else.” She could already feel the heat returning to her face.

The zinogre tilted his head to glance at the spring, and… nodded? Was that instinct, or did he know what it meant? He must have. She felt a sudden pull of curiosity. Just how much had her concoction affected him? How much intuitive understanding did it give him, along with its other more obvious effects? She wanted to know. Maybe she could refine the formula, make something that would enable real two-way communication between man and monster. She would need to find out just how well the zinogre understood her, and then…

No. She was going to get ahead of herself again. First things first: her bowgun. She crept toward the edge of the spring, but the zinogre showed no signs of hostility or unease. At last she found herself standing above the clear water, and leaned over to peer down into the depths.

The spring wasn’t too terribly deep—maybe twenty feet at its deepest—and the water was so crystal clear that she could easily see where her bowgun had come to rest on the bottom. Relief welled up in her. At least it was still there. All she had to do was psych herself up for a dive, though she would probably want to get out of these clothes first, even it meant diving into the spring in the nude—

She felt a touch at her back, and by the time she had opened her mouth the touch became a shove. With an abortive squeal, she toppled forward (she dimly realized her backpack was yanked from her shoulder as she fell) and the ice-cold water rose to meet her face-first.

A frozen chill enveloped her, and instinct kicked in immediately. She kicked her feet hard and plunged deeper into the spring; she hadn’t gotten much of a breath before taking the dive, and she wouldn’t have much air, but the bowgun wasn’t far and all she needed to do was get down there and get back up. There was no time for indignation or even surprise or even thinking about how much she hated swimming: she pushed herself to the bottom and wound icy fingers around the barrel of her weapon. Reversing course and planting her feet on the bottom, she shoved herself back toward the surface. The water dragged on her clothing, but after a few swift kicks she broke the surface with a splash and a wheeze and flung her bowgun onto dry land.

As she began to pull herself up out of the spring, shaking, a hand took hold of her shirt and hauled her up into the grass. She staggered to her feet to find herself staring up into the face of the zinogre, who was absolutely looking entirely too pleased with himself right now.

“You, you--!”

Her sputtering protest died stillborn as the zinogre’s heavy claw fell to her breast and gave it a shameless squeeze through her sodden shirt. Her breath froze and her nipple stiffened instantly—from the spring water, she told herself. She dared not fight him. She didn’t want to fight him. Wait, of course she did. He was just too strong to make it practical. Right? Right. But it quickly became apparent that no fighting would be necessary, for after dragging his thumb-claw back and forth a few times over the peak of her breast (which sent jolts of sensation straight down her spine to pool in her gut), he withdrew his hand.

“That was uncalled for,” she huffed, shuffling backward. She wasn’t sure if she was talking about the grope or being shoved into the water. Just so she didn’t have to meet his eyes, she cast about for her backpack, and found it safe and dry on the edge of the spring. Had he grabbed it when he pushed her, so it wouldn’t get soaked as well? That was… oddly kind of him. But it probably just fell off when she took the plunge, right? Right.

She was dripping wet—and now shivering from the cold—but she slung her pack back over her shoulder nonetheless and picked up her dripping bowgun. It would need a thorough cleaning, but the water wouldn’t ruin anything, fortunately. She probably should have gotten out of her clothes and let them dry, but the thought of disrobing in front of the zinogre gave her an oddly queasy feeling that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

Yet, with her gear retrieved, she hesitated. She could just go home now, with most of her gear sort of intact, but she had come on a guild quest, and if she came back empty-handed, she would have nothing to show for it all. With a frown, she shuffled her feet and glanced up at the zinogre, who was still watching her with slightly bared fangs that she took to be a smile. She wasn’t sure why, but the rest of his body language was so relaxed that it didn’t parse as threatening.

“You need to not eat any more of that rancher’s livestock,” she said. The zinogre tilted his head. Had he understood? She pantomimed grabbing something and eating it, pointed in the direction she thought the ranch was in, and then shook her head. “No eating the moofahs. Okay? If you do, I’ll have to come back, and then I won’t be so nice.” More likely, she would be humiliated and possibly branded a screw-up, or worse, a liar, and then some other hunter would be dispatched to hunt the zinogre

A long silence stretched between them. The zinogre simply stood there watching her, and as the seconds ticked by, Mikayla grew restless. “Are you—“ His hand was already moving the moment her mouth opened, and he interrupted her question with two thick claws pressed against her lips. She blinked. Was he messing with her?

He leaned down, drawing his muzzle close to her face, and his other hand rose to her shoulder; from there it slid up to her neck to cradle her. It was his turn to wet his lips, that broad tongue flicking out over his muzzle, and then, after a moment’s hesitation: “You… will… come back.” The voice was deep and gravelly, and the words warped by an accent borne of a tongue and lips unsuited and unfamiliar to the language—but they were words, and she understood them.

She felt like her heart had stopped. Her breath certainly had. He spoke. Monsters didn’t speak, not even the smartest of them. But then again, monsters didn’t walk on two legs like a man, either, and monsters didn’t… do what he did to her. She was an explorer in uncharted territory. So alarmed was she by his unexpected words that the content of them bypassed her altogether: she had to stumble back through her memory to hear what he had said.

“I’ll… what?” she said, muffled, against his fingers.

Exasperation (or so she thought) stole across the zinogre’s face. “You will… come back, I will not… eat.” The words were clearly unfamiliar on his tongue, and he yet spoke with a halting, careful cadence as he formed each one. “You not come back, I will eat.”

It took only a moment of puzzling over his words for the meaning to become apparent to her, and when she realized it, a fresh elation began to bubble up inside of her. Was he trying to now strike a deal with her? Make an agreement? It was exactly what she had been hoping for all along: a meeting of minds. If she could just negotiate with the monsters, all the killing wouldn’t be necessary. Never mind what this particular negotiation consisted of. Surely not every monster was driven by a ruthless libido.

She took his hand in hers and gently tugged his claws away from her lips, though for reasons unclear she kept his hand close to her chest. “You’re saying that if I come back to visit later, you won’t hunt the livestock anymore? Yes, of course! You’ll need—I mean, you can speak, who knows how, but you’ll need some, some… education, or training, or something. I’ll bring books, language books, history books…” He was regarding her with a newly amused expression as she babbled, and it didn’t dawn on her until she had been going on for some time that he probably didn’t have education in mind when he made the offer.

Her face went red again. (Had it ever gone back to normal in his presence?) She pursed her lips. “I will bring books. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not here for you to—“ His hand fell to her left breast after effortlessly pulling free of her grip, and the squeeze he gave her there brought her up short. Her belly fluttered, and a fresh wave of warmth rolled down her spine. Her hands fell to his wrist; it took both of them together to encircle the scaly limb. “I’m not a toy,” she breathed, though even as she spoke she felt his other hand dipping between her skin and the waistband of her pants.

The rest was a blur. Somehow she ended up on her back. She wasn’t sure where her shirt went, or when it had disappeared, but she felt the prickle of soft grass against her bare skin. Her sodden pants dangled from one ankle. Everywhere she looked or reached, he was there, his radiant body heat bathing her. She was grateful for it after the cold spring, and she showed her gratitude by pushing uselessly against his limbs and fussing at him as he pinned her beneath him for the second time in as many days. She didn’t remember what she said, or what he said to her—she was sure he said something in that rumbling voice of his.

The words didn’t really matter anyway, right? Right.

* * *

Mikayla leaned on the airship railing and watched the profile of Stark rise over the horizon. Her vision was still bleary from sleep, but she knew the city’s contours by heart, and an odd sensation of relief came over her at the sight of her home. She had always thought it a backwater, even when it began to grow, but a few days of stomping around alone in the wilderness had invested her with a fresh respect for civilization, however remote.

The ranch hadn’t been too terribly far away from Stark, but it was the furthest afield she had ever traveled, and after her… adventure… she would be happy for a bit of rest and recuperation and hot cooked meals. The money she’d make from the guild quest would keep her tidy for weeks, so long as she kept her budget in order. She could afford a vacation.

Which was good, because she needed one. Every part of her body ached, and though her clothing was now merely slightly damp, she was afraid she the chill and the altitude would make her catch a cold. Even standing up straight was an ordeal, so she was grateful for even the small blessing of having something to lean against as she watched the airship come in. She could have been laying down belowdecks—she had spent most of the trip napping already—but her eagerness to bring word of her victory back to the guild hall gave her enough energy to endure the throbbing soreness in her thighs and legs.

When the airship docked at last, and the captain and his felyne deckhands made themselves busy securing the ship, she was already waiting at the gangplank to disembark. She was the first one onto the docks, walking faster than her wincing thighs would have preferred, but a fresh excitement had filled her and she would not be slowed. She was already fishing the request out of her pack as she made her way toward the guild hall—the slip of paper had been signed and stamped by the requester, and served as proof that she had resolved the problem satisfactorily.

Of course, she hadn’t told the ranch owner how exactly she had solved the problem, but she hadn’t exactly lied, either. He was free to make his own assumptions.

She was happy to see Lis manning the guild counter when she entered the hall. She strode triumphantly up to her friend—who was, fortunately, not dealing with any other customer that would force Mikayla to wait—and slapped the request down on the counter with pride. (In retrospect, she could have been more circumspect. But she was a bit excited.)

Lis blinked at her. “Well, good afternoon to you, too. What is this?” She took up the paper and scanned it, then sighed. “Mik, we talked about this. I know you haven’t gotten enough practice in the last couple of… wait.” Her eyes fixed on the signature and stamp at the bottom, reading it and rereading it until it dawned on her what she was looking at. Her mouth fell open. “Mikayla! You didn’t.”

Mikayla beamed. “I told you I could do it.”

Lis looked considerably more upset than she had expected, but it was tempered with genuine surprise. “Mikayla, I take back what I said about you being smart. Are you crazy? You could have been killed.” She looked up at her friend, squinting at Mikayla’s damp and unfamiliar clothing. “Where did your armor go? And look at your hair! Why do you look like you just climbed out of a lake?”

Mikayla cleared her throat. “Well. There were some complications, but I handled them all very well, thank you. My armor might need some fixing up, and I did… um… trip and fall into a spring. But the important part is that I did it!”

“Well…” Lis looked at the signature again, as if trying to determine its authenticity. “You’re alive, and you satisfied the request, so… I guess you did.”

“So can we cash it out?”

Lis hesitated. “I’m really not supposed to. If we just let people take any request they want, and then look the other way…” She frowned down at the completed request.

“Well, um… truth be told… I really do need the money.” Mikayla’s triumphant demeanor dimmed, and she leaned forward while dropping her voice. “I sort of incurred a debt for… services rendered during the, um, hunt.”

Lis sighed. “Mikayla! I can’t believe you took risks like that. All right, look. I can’t put it on your official record, but I can put it on Keith’s and we can cash it out to you. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

Mikayla brightened instantly. “Great! I don’t care if it’s not official. I just wanted to prove I could do it.” And test out her plan, which was a success, after a fashion.

“Don’t care if what’s not official?” An unfortunately familiar voice came from behind her, and Mikayla was suddenly pushed aside by another hunter shouldering her way up to the counter. It was the hunter from before—she still couldn’t remember the woman’s name—decked out in her green scale armor. The hunter plucked the scrap of paper from Lis’ hands and scanned it before barking a laugh. “What, you actually went and did this? I think jaggi are more your speed, sweetheart. Who did you bribe to stamp this?”

Mikayla puffed up her cheeks. “I didn’t bribe anyone! I was completely legitimate.”

Another laugh. “Except for not being authorized to take the request, or cash it out. Weren’t you not even official a few days ago? You think the guild is going to like hearing that a new hunter is ignoring all of their rules?” She leaned against the counter and waved the completed request at Lis. “I’d like to cash this in, please.”

Mikayla’s eyes widened. “What?!”

The hunter’s eyes narrowed to slits and a thin smile stole across her face. “What’s that? You wouldn’t want the guild to hear that a greenhorn and a guild clerk were conspiring to defraud them, would you?” She glanced sidelong at Lis. “It would be such a shame if anyone were to hear.”

“Keep your voice down,” Lis hissed, then turned a sorrowful expression toward Mikayla. “I’m sorry, Mik. She’s right. We can’t ignore guild law.”

“That’s blackmail!”

The other hunter’s smile widened. “If you don’t want to be blackmailed, don’t do things that you can be blackmailed about, darling. Now, about this request—“ She slid the request across the counter.

Lis hesitated, then, with a sigh, slowly drew a broad, circular stamp out from beneath the counter and stamped the request as completed. “I’m sorry, Mik,” she said again. “My hands are tied. We’ll get you set up with something soon, I’m sure.”

What elation Mikayla had felt upon striding down the gangplank had turned into a leaden lump in her stomach, a lump that festered as she watched Lis unhappily count out a sizable “reward” to the whore of a hunter who had blackmailed her. That was her reward. It wasn’t even really about the money—though now the bill tucked into her pack seemed to weigh her down far beyond the ability of a mere sheet of paper to do so. It was like she was watching her victory being stolen from her in real time.

She didn’t wait around to see the rest of the drama play out. She didn’t blame Lis for doing what she had to do—Lis had been held over the fire as much as she had. But she couldn’t bear to watch, and the sharp spark of resentment that blossomed in her breast was an alarming and unpleasant surprise. Pivoting on her heel, she strode out of the hall and into the street beyond.

That green-scaled harlot would get hers. She just needed to figure out how.

* * *

“Another request?” Lis looked down at the paper on the counter. “It’s only been two days. Are you sure you’re rested enough? And… that you’re feeling all right?” She meant two different things by that, Mikayla knew.

“I’m fine. Really!” It was only a white lie. She was mostly fine—still sore to the point of distraction, but at least she could move without groaning and moaning like she had spent the last two days doing. As for the rest of it… she had buried any lingering resentment beneath a fresh layer of confident cheer. She had succeeded once against great odds—of course she could succeed again. And being desperately in debt was a good way to motivate her not to rest too long. “I decided that this time I’m going to aim for something slightly more, ah… legal.”

“That’s a relief. I don’t want a repeat of that unpleasantness. Let’s see…” Lis squinted at the request. “A royal ludroth? That’s within your ranking, but usually hunters get a little more experience in the field before hunting one of those. Are you sure about this?”

Mikayla flashed a grin and gave Lis a thumbs-up. “Trust me. I have a plan.”