The Dunaan

[Seydon of Arda]

The Dunaan​

[Tertiary Media Archive – Box 78~//.08]
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“...now the Eastern Spinward holds its breath. Reprisals are expected across Mandalorian territories in the wake of a surprise attack in Mandalore orbit. Reportedly, rogue elements initiated an assault on a geo-synced orbital platform, leading to an hours long firefight between United Clan gunfighters and alleged anarchists. Amongst casualty lists being forwarded through spokes-channels, is the reported death of clan head or A'lor, Ember Rekali. A famed mercenary and figurehead of Clan Rekali, his influence galvanized his warband from semi-nomadic status to an economic and political force. In spite of controversies surrounding his embrace of several fringe traditions, many regarded the war chief as the premier authority amongst Mandalorian clans. With his death marks the closing of a long era of consolidation for his extended family, leading some to call into question the future of Rekali endeavours. Especially as systematic violence is expected against the newly established 'Mandalorian Empire' in opposition of the United Clans, a galactic power reportedly facing criticisms for its role in enabling the attack.

Vehement denials have been broadcast from the camp of self-proclaimed Mandalore Isley Verd. Isley, a noted former protege of Ember Rekali, has expressed his grief at his mentor's assassination. Eyes are now upon Alec Rekali, Ember's surviving granddaughter and heir-apparent, saddled with guiding the Rekali Clan in the aftermath of his departure. A'lor Alec was unavailable for comment - “

-Jsacey Isaaks, Obroa-Skai Continental Tribune

-

“...and because of that, we're seeing more and more cases of individual unilateralism. Where private citizens feel empowered to bypass pan-galactic law on a whim.”

“But if anything, alliances and independent worlds are taking steps to limit, if not outright curb, those sorts of instances.”

“Are we occupying the same reality, Thom?”

“Are we? You're calling for pitchfork tactics against a facet of pangalactic citizenry that does not account for the whole.”

“A facet that is responsible and must be held accountable for their part in atrocities committed across the last twenty years. I'm not suggesting we throw funding and carte blanche behind far-wing groups but enough is enough. Are the few really going to be allowed to hold the galaxy by the throat? Can we accept that?”

“Can we accept what is, ultimately, an answer against violence and tyranny by sanctioning acceptable discrimination?”

“So you're saying you're comfortable with a random individual off the streets possessing the potential to one day level said streets.”

“I'm saying we're pundits, Daril. I'm saying that you can't level a political spreadsheet against a biological and spiritual phenomenon that affects thousands of individuals in just as many ways. When it becomes legally acceptable to launch witch-hunts - “

“You're reaching, Thom, this is - “

“When it becomes legally acceptable to launch witch-hunts against a minority, you risk endangering the rights and lives of the majorities. To say nothing of the excesses and dangers that said minority will suffer for it.”

“But we can't ignore that Force sensitive autonomy is dangerous!”

-Daril Monogan & Thom Bier – GANN Counterfire Panel

-

“...just think the problem is, a lot of powers are looking for a simple way to look at a complex situation. Trillions of lives. Thousands of spread cultures. They're all looking for a way to definitively police it all and it's just not gonna happen. It's just not. You'll never see it in a million life times. But you're always gonna get the crackpots and overlords springing up proclaiming they've got a better way. It never works out. So many are scared of a future that doesn't exist. Tomorrow doesn't arrive until it does and it's madness to try and pin the sins of a future that hasn't come onto someone that's convenient to demonize.”

“But when you get a crossbreed of culture and tradition, into something that touts military and political power – take the Rekali's for instance – you don't feel that's cause for alarm?”

“...I don't know. I don't know. You ask me what's right and wrong, in absolute terms, I don't want to tell you. Believe me, it leaves me scared too. Where does it leave us, right?”

“So what do you think?”

“...What I know best is, 'Actions speak louder than words.'”

-Kharlie Roze & DJ Yhared – The Kharlie Roze Show

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Black Forest​

​

I​

​

Contruum orbital lanes were derelict of any standard patrol gunboats. Local militia, raised to standards Aiden Cracken would approve, had commandeered previously impounded policing cruisers and refitted them for sub-zero flight rigours. The equatorial line, a strip of urban and agrarian zones touting the majority of the world's population, was belted with waiting 'firing platforms' aimed at the hyperspace lanes exiting out of Onderon. OS losses taken at Dulovyin, proving the knife the Galactic Alliance was driving towards the heart of Coruscant was no joke, emboldened insurgent pockets to encourage Sith assets to vacate the system. The planetary governor felt motivated to withdraw troop and naval forces in a gesture meant to reinforce the Core Worlds. Not because his residence had been firebombed, nine of his cabinet members assassinated on the street in a single day, or the loss of three ammunition depots from precisely aimed orbital satellite drops.

Facing spinward was the Garvel Aninoi. An Orzu tug refitted with mine-launchers and hellfire torpedo banks, exchanging pressor field generators for tri-barrel heavy cannons. Stencilled with Contruum graffiti into a multi-coloured dual prow defender. When spacial fabric warped open and their sensor screen detected a hyperdrive making a lightspeed exit, it spun up frequency and infra-red locks. Targeting onto something dark and winged, languidly dropping out of hyperspace and holding position one-hundred thousand kilometers from Contruum orbit.

“Unidentified spacecraft,” said captain Brae Ghelds. “You're entering contested orbital space. Transmit IFF and associated credentials, or be on your way. Or get blown into hard void. Either or, you'd be making our day.”

“Caught you jumpy, Garvel,” Said the gruff voice. “Just make sure your in-load speed is up to snuff before you try venting me into space. Transmitting now.”

Tight beams of invisible data spat back and forth, just under the speed of transmittable light. The Garvel Aninoi gestated the IFF packet. Several legitimate visas, transponder readings, a copy of the vessel's navicomp records dating back to three weeks prior. Captain Ghelds ruminated with her five on-hand crew, before thumbing on the comm. 'caster and addressing the newcomer.

“What's your business around Contruum?”

“Visiting family,” Said the man. “Some promises to keep. You know what that means, if you're at high anchor in half-assed warship. Scared of whatever comes out of the dark.”

Across from the blocky barge, the Relentless sat like a heron at perch. Its traditional lines drew it like the style of the ancient tier one shuttles, a long prow elegantly sweeping back into hooked wings studded with manoeuvring thrusters. A cluster of engine nozzles fitted out of the aft, lending an industrial edge to the high-tech panelling gracing the long hulling. The cockpit was a recessed, opaque matte that screened out the Garvel's flood lamps. A faceless mechanical thing floating still at spacial anchor and waiting on Captain Ghelds decision.

Strapped into a tight cockpit sharing more features with a fighter seat than bridge, Seydon of Arda flexed the strain out of his wrists and kept a grip on the steering joy-yokes. Thrust and reverse-impulse actions were keyed into pedals his boots strapped against. Cabin illumination came from the host of readout plates and diodes. Before long, comm. speakers mounted into his headrest blared on.

“Alright, Relentless. We'll pass on your transponder codes, see you don't get shot on your way out. Just do us a favour and don't take long. We're all waiting for good news still.”

“Won't keep you waiting, Garvel,” Seydon said, keying the channel dead. He pedalled a whisper of forward impulse out of the engines, beginning to glide out of anchor. The Relentless slid past the Garvel Aninoi, winking its guidance lights off the forward mine launchers and cold, idle cannon batteries.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Planetfall was beyond the subtropics and thickly inhabited equator Contruumites converted into prosperous living zones. The Relentless tracked along an invisible avenue ghosting through the thinnest parts of the high atmosphere, leaving behind the mosaic squares of partitioned and irrigated farming zones nestled beside nickel-coloured blotches where metropolis' heaved with constant electric heat and light. It made for the northern magnetosphere: the arctic cap splayed across the planetary crust. From orbit, it looked crystal clear and ferociously chilly. Seydon consulted a menu list of available protocols to counteract the dropped temperatures. He settled on drawing out the antifreeze stores mounted in thick tanks within the wing nacelle superstructures, disabling auto-pilot for the duration of reentry. He relished the tremble that came up through the control yokes, twitching the joysticks a hair millimetre starboard or port, levelling off the stern and aft thrusters like a micro-sensitive balancing act. Jorus wasn't wrong with his addiction to starfighter antics. There was joy in vessel control.

Reentry temperatures activated a shield mask across the cockpit viewscreen. Seydon had the sensation of falling blind, staring at approaching landscapes below through a 3D mockup generated via the Relentless' powerful, experimental sensor suites. Five minutes on, the shaking paused. He cycled the ship's localized gravity off and felt the weight of the world below suddenly tug onto his flesh. That was his comfort. Dunaan weren't built for space. Saliva whetted his mouth at the prospect of uneven terrain and fresh, non-recycled air. He adjusted for atmospherics, turning the ship into the face of a north wind.

The Fang. The witcher made for the Fang. It protruded from a glacial lip over two kilometers high, a rare ten-thousand meter alpine 'pyramid'. Behind, it opened into a crystalline basin eventually disappearing into folds of monstrous hoarfrost. Before it, the seemingly endless arboreal forestry that extended to the equator line until petering out into rings of empty desert. The Relentless flew low, buzzing the tops of pine growths so green, they were virtually jet black. In the cockpit, watching the edges of the viewscreen begin caking with frost, Seydon looked up as the peak shadowed over. Aptly named, the Fang curled in on itself almost impossibly. Appearing from orbit as a hook of tremendous stone with the profile of a sinking tooth. A natural cataclysm caused a portion of the mountain to fall out from under itself, the remains now buried under skirts of meters thick ice and a layer of alpine dirt and verdancy.

Seydon piloted for the south west face, a bleak tundra shelf naked of glacier or trees. The Relentless slowed, hewed off knots of speed as winds caught under its nacelles, brushing a cloud of rock hard snowflakes out from below its emerging landing claws. There were still remains of an ancient landing pad carved into a patch of some softer volcanic stone, though now partially submerged in rocky detritus and mountain jetsam. At last, the Dunaan eased the vessel's bulk onto its stanchions and felt the hydraulics briefly bounce. Engine power was cut off, save for a running cabin heater. He levered the forward heat shields back into place over the viewscreen. The dark reached him again as vessel readout plates shunted off.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Once, offworld logging interests attempted keeping a year-round camp open on the slopes of the Fang. The interest caved; a combination of poor business practice, the excesses of a high-rolling financial officer, a fire, and a mean murder on site cratered the effort. What remained were laser-cut steps mounting high towards a snow drenched butte, alongside the camp itself, and the ancient logging road leading into regrown swathes of black pines that swallowed up the grey sun like night.

The Dunaan traced up the stairs. Cold forced an extra layer of wool, olive fatigues atop his favoured set of Dromund Kaas-made hunting gear, weighed by leather harnessing packed with cold survival gear, and the paired swords rustling across his shoulders. Seydon bit into dried nerf jerky, peckish. Somehow, the ambient chill was managing to find its way to his skin, racking an inward shiver that quivered the meat of his belly and lungs. Snowflakes kept catching into his eyelashes. A moan of wind blew across the rock staircase, precipitating an iced chunk from a snowdrift colliding with the witcher's shoulder and disintegrating.

Ahead, the staircase levelled and opened into an iron-panelled gate left opened and levelled by the force an exiting machine. Seydon ran a hand across a discarded corrugate sheet propped against the gate jamb. Metal flakes caught on his glove. He walked beyond the gatehouse and the chainlink fencing, into a tight courtyard. The camp had been constructed to climb with the rock. The courtyard was one of four landings connected via petrified log causeways leading to the site manager's overlook office. To save on the cost of prefabs, wood culled from the arboreal tracts beyond had been utilized in raising bunkhouses, processing houses, hanging the logs off the butte edging with mechanical 'tongues' and hook winches. Seydon paused under the skeleton of a cannibalized swing yarder, picking an ancient vibro-fell axe out of an ice drift.

“'Nother hundred years, you'll be gone,” He said aloud. Exposure, erosion, and the lack of a spring melt was burying the camp under an extra centimetre of snow each passing year. Most metals to be found were rotten by age. The wood constructs petrified solid and useless for working or salvage. Camp kit left to disappear under the ice were likewise lost. Now, the logger build only served as a local historical reminder. Another century and the Fang would claim it for its own.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

The 'van' was the last building mounted at the top of the camp 'trough' climbing the mountain face. Combination storefront and managerial office, it catered to on-site purchases made to collect new winter gear and amenities, all deducted from company pay stubs issued bi-weekly. Frozen paper work stuck and littered the rug floor. A laser-quill was left stuck in a far wall. Violence pitted the ceiling with flechette buckshot and errant blaster bolts, the second floor stairwell a collapsed woodpile where a force had crashed through the thick landing. The back of the first floor opened into a storage shed once kept under lock, key, and motion detector. It was the only steel door Seydon had seen in the camp, and scored deeply by a wild swing from a vibro weapon. It swung lightly by the rare breezes that managed in penetrating the front door.

Seydon winced from memory. Part of the front door frame and jamb had been pierced and shattered by high velocity slug rounds. Discarded shotgun cartridges littered in a pile nearby, spent from returning fire. The store counter had been halved after the firefight descended into a brawl, a pair of bodies duelling fiercely with vibro-cutlasses and parrying axes. Blood from a gut wound was left sprayed and chilled on the remains of the banister. A hole where a fragmentation grenade detonated spread splintered carnage across the lobby. Seydon peered up through the makeshift skylight, into a quicksilver sky...

Guenyvhar passed the edge of her long sabre through his mistimed parry and scored a mean weal of open skin from his shoulder to navel. Seroth grunted, then rallied, teasing her swordplay with an unorthodox jab before cutting at her shin, her hip, snapping the cutlass guard up into her lip. It burst, spraying a fine mist into his face. Her foot came up and bowled him back across the floor. Rolling, he was on his feet, checking her next assault before slashing deep into the bone of her left shoulder.

He'd never heard her shriek so. Pain enabled rage. She tore free and released the longknife waiting in her parrying hand, slamming a two-gripped blow across his sword flat until it cracked. Then broke. The lad rushed, catching her elbows with forearm guards, chopping a fist into her throat and tearing her sabre free. It went tossing out the window. Guen reeled back, snapping her hold-out pistol from her sleeve. In any fiction, it was expected she'd make an absolutist statement before declaring something hateful. Guenyvhar just kept shooting at him as her son dove for cover behind a torn bunk couch. The pistol rang dry, was thrown at the couch as Seroth called on anger and gripped the furniture like a battering ram. Guen, couch, and himself went flying through the back van wall, out onto a thin shelf of ice. Climbing and fighting as they rose along the face of the Fang...

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Guenyvhar Gunn died with her son as company on a far away mountain outcrop. Long before, Dathan Gunn fell at her hands, shot close range through his skull, left buried under radioactive sands. There'd been nothing left of Rave Merrill when she stood aside and gave her existence to spite power hungry invaders from slagging a small survivor's camp with an orbital drop. Now, the first Seydon of Arda heard of Ember Rekali's death was a breaking news GANN bulletin, re-broadcast, tweeted, blogged and reblogged, until inescapable social media saturation made sure he knew.

All, remarkably, on the same galactic standard calender day.

A spare straw broom was found propped up in a looted janitorial closet. What debris could be pried off the old hardwood flooring was swept into a car corner and kept company with the discarded broom, as Seydon knelt to his knees and sat against the heels of his boots. The spot was the van's impromptu lounge, before the trickle of hoarfrost and snow fall leaking through the smashed second floor and the holed roof beyond. There were traces still of depleted baridium: an iron-electric taste on his tongue and up his nose, the smell of metallic shavings being cooked over coals. Guen's fragmentary grenade had nearly tore them both apart, grappling across the room before a burst of concussive force clubbed them off their feet.

He'd brought a loose duffel sack along from the Relentless. Following a moment's meditation, quieting a tumult of flooding memories, Seydon unfurled the zipper and brought out four chrome stars. Each was unmarred save for a metallic residue, like gas rainbows when poured into fresh water. He held up one to the snowy light: a bit larger than his hand and made of a sturdy, corrode resistant alloy. With the edge of a skinning knife, Seydon went about a last touch, marring the steel with a name. First, Guenyvhar. Dathan. Rave. Ember. Four steel stars planted upright along a cleaned floor plank. Then christened with droplets spattered from the nozzle of his water canteen. In some traditions, Seydon remembered, water was holy blood, the life of gods poured onto worlds. Maybe it was a poor toast but it was the best he had on hand.

“Suppose this is all I can do for a memorial,” Seydon said after a beat. “Kept imagining I'd have something... profound and wise to say, to mark to the occasion. I don't have the words handy with me, turns out. Probably for the best.”

He paused, imagining a chuckle from somewhere. “...Not sure I'll want to come back, add any more little steel shurikens. Thought of putting together some pieces more elaborate but the money just never came. Excuses, excuses. Not like I've made as many to avoid these sorts of anniversaries. You know, because who's there to give a shid with me? Guen, we hardly knew you. Same for you, Dathan. Can't bring myself to call you mother or father. Rave? Rave, all they loved out of you was what your fever dreams could build for them. Maybe I was guilty of that. Ember, they're gonna start killing one another over you. But I wager the only true grief is Alec's right about now. Everyone else is just... peripheral anger. The loss of an ideal.”

Another pause, breaking up Seydon's train of thought. ...Another smell. He caught it just as an after-thought when he turned into a stale press of wind that ghosted through the empty framing of a smashed plasteel window. It tasted on the back of his tongue like a mechanical oil, used to grease machine pieces and protect against heat friction. With the next breath, it was gone. His attentions returned to the row of steel stars.

“As for me? Think I owe you all each a piece of me. Not sure which pieces and in what order, but I feel it. Should have gave back what I could but it was always a little too late for that. We never had time. Now everyone's scrabbling to get a hold of your legacies and stamp their mark on it. Psht, Rave, you'd be sick if you knew all the sycophants that bawled around AEI. Woe is them. The mother they never had. Galaxy's greatest teacher, the secrets of your arts taken to your grave. Fething hero worship – Huh?”

 

[Seydon of Arda]

It was an ER-1 electromagnetic linear accelerator assault rifle, repurposed through a host of after-market modifications to reinforce the shoulder stock and add a similarly weighty barrel to take the brunt of firing mag-rail speed projectiles. After conversion, six hundred meters on a point target extended now to five thousand, putting the wielder behind a five kilometre buffer and instilling fear of an invisible, killing touch on any body unfortunate enough to fall into sight. The sniper was squirrelled away within an ancient hunting blind, sunk waist deep in snow, fighting frigidity with suit thermals circulating heated water into their hands. The logger camp van was a naked structure atop the butte road. A goggle-link fed the rifle's scope camera into the sniper's AR contact lenses. They blinked, transitioning from visible light to infra-red/heat signature overlay.

Settled in the cold, Seydon's outline glowed white and warm. Easy meat, an unwary buck. A combination poncho with both light bending properties and octo-camera playback, with a taozin amulet mounted just under the sternum, rendered almost perfect invisibility. The sniper was only a dark sliver below, indistinguishable from the hordes of pine needles. A backup fire team was halfway up the camp, unfolding into a fluid crossfire formation, pinning the office van squarely into a killing field. Comm. chatter whispered. All variables anticipated, ready with compensation. Safeties were allowed off. They had first shot. A fluid-warmed thumb snapped the safety tab onto semi-auto, exhaled, drew in a crisp breath, cocked the action and squeezed the trigger -

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He'd smelled the plastics and sulphur of slug round ammunition magazines, next to the fortunate drift of barrel oil that wafted up out of the valley earlier, tuning his hearing until it stung listening to the grind of snowflakes pattering outside. Five heartbeat rates below in the camp, all slowed and lethargic but there. Trying to breathe noiselessly. Bristling static off their photo-electric personal cloaking devices, curling and cooking the arctic wind, leaving a cutting smell of ozone. As Seydon half-mumbled through his one-sided conversation with the dead, all automatic as his hand began trailing up his chest piece for Razorlight, the true quiet arrived. Every body below held their breath in, stilled. Heartbeats raced a beat faster. The wind quieted and left Contruum's Fang frozen in time.

Cat-eye pupils narrowed slit-thin. Hairs across his nape and back stood on end.

The depleted sabot round whined past his ear and scalp, impacting into the far east corner of the first floor lobby and blew out the wooden 'teeth' that wedged the wall logs. Seydon had collapsed onto his side and now laid as still as he could muster, stuck in an awkward pose. A knot was forming in his lumbar from the muscle tension and pull. Now, he could only wait. Gently, he affected a slack across his limbs that mimicked the loose 'death' in a fresh corpse. Eyes, half-lidded, took on a muted, catatonic fugue. The Dunaan feinted suffering from a catastrophic skull wound that killed and rolled him over instantly. And hoping his resting angle foiled the sniper's next shot...

A footfall crunched too fully on the door plate. An invisible 'weight' entered into the van lobby. Snowfall from outside clung a small host of melting flakes across the cloaked poncho skin and hood, rendering an eerie sight of ice particles hanging and juddering in mid air. They held onto a close-quarters-SMG, draped in photomorphic camouflage strips. An infrared sight strobed and quivered over Seydon's right eye, tracing an unsure line down his too still body. Another presence joined at the van doorway, peaking in past the jamb. A third lined up behind the second, busily checking their 6.

“Don't shoot his face off,” A male voice said through comm. static. “Let's not rookie this. Just make the facial recognition, double-plug his skull, so we can strip the gear and get out of here.”

“Hang on,” Said another male. The closer presence. He was the first gunman to enter the van store and approach Seydon's 'corpse'. “Thermals are looking weird.”

The Dunaan willed every string of muscle and sinew to relax, throwing his musculature into a partial state of gelatin. The gunner was right atop him, toeing into one slackened knee. Surprise had to be sudden and utterly absolute. He'd not risk trying to race his hand for Razorlight against the speed of a slug round at close quarters. The musk of unwashed skin was seeping through their bodygloves. Rankness was stinging into his eyes. The urge to blink was unbearable.

“Guess these mutants can hang on to body heat longer after expiration,” The gunner finally commented, shouldering his SMG out of his way and going down onto a knee. “Jot that down. Kinda freaky. Guess their transformation process does something to insulate their – Oh shid.”

“What?” Barked the other male at the door.

Seydon blinked. Blood rushed painfully back into his hands. The right curled, balled up tightly, and slam-punched into the gunmen's jaw and nose. Portions of an almost glassy faceplate smashed open. The effect was being cannoned at close range by an industrial sledge-hammer: force lifted the gunman off his feet and flew him across to the far west wall, rebounding wetly with an explosion of petrified splinters and shattering scapula. Next, a piston hiss and a snap of flying cord. The doorway gunner jerked as fine steel teeth dug through the poncho skin into his ribs. Seydon yanked on the grappling hook line, rising off the floor into the tripping gunner. And then motion blur. The SMG piece went spinning into a lounger corner, discharging errant rounds into the log walling. Its owner collapsed as his heels flew out, both arms struck nerveless, clavicle snapped, and missing teeth where an elbow shot burled through his protective face plate.

Slug fire ripped the moldings free off the entry doorway and pounded into the fat logging where a narrow window had been carved and installed. Three heartbeats ten, twelve paces below along the causeway, Seydon heard, throwing himself back onto the flooring, crawling off his elbows and splayed knees. The SMG's lacked piercing ability. Another errant ER-1 round boomed and cut through part of the south facing wall, knocking out another tier of interlocked wood.

Outside, someone cursed and commanded their fire to halt. Bootfalls kicking off the causeway planks, a body skipping forward before grunting out of effort. Silence, but for a fat object turning over in the air, whistling in Seydon's ears. The Dunaan was already up and teeth bared, breath tight in his chest as he dove for the janitorial closet. A tightly banded can, marked off by ribbons of carmine, thunked across the lobby. Three seconds on, it rolled beside the sales counter left halved by an old vibro-sword blow, and detonated.

Smoke dressed with saw-dust embers and cavorting Contruum pine spars stormed out through the door. Part of the closet walling and a portion of hardwood planking knocked free by concussive force collapsed and buried over Seydon. He laid half splayed, an arm and leg poking free. Splinters were embedded across his jaw, a debris spar stuck into the skin of a hip. With ears ringing, he couldn't make out the heartbeats or boot steps, his nostrils choked with smoke, flash-melted snow, and burning sawdust. Was that a tremble through the floor? Were they already sweeping inside?

“Think I got him here! Thermals are still wonky!”

“What are you waiting for?” Another voice, thin and a little shrill.

He'd one leg braced against the closet wall blanketing over his frame. Seydon tensed and remembered he could still, in fact, breathe. Trembling sensations working into the fine, sensitive hairs across his frame: three distinct weight profiles and strides taking their care entering after their downed comrades. Two took up a firing lane by the doorway, one brave soldier daring to approach the limp, half crushed form trying to pant sawdust out of his nostrils. He could barely see through debris motes clinging and stinging into his eyes. Three bodies. A fourth out there somewhere, aiming with that damn high powered rifle. Be quick, Seydon told himself.

Be quicker than the devil.

A mule kick shoved the partial walling and corner brace into the gunner's diaphragm. The ragged timber sunk into flesh, misting red, poking a ragged end of broke, bleeding wood out past their hip. Their voice modulator howled an indistinct and atonal death cry through the helmet rebreather, pitching off their feet in a plume of frost and upholstery dust. A dark shape in grey fatigues blotched with chestnut bark camo-patterning, fist tightening in the trigger guard, stippling the ceiling with half the magazine load. Their shoulder's touched the hardwood, Seydon on his feet as milliseconds ticked, loosing Razorlight free. Single-edged, an elegant curve from glacial point to slender cross-bar, indestructible and would stay nestled in the heart of a sun if thrown, cooking white hot for all it's solar lifetime.

It drove a defensive wedge through a hail of replying SMG chatter, the Dunaan rushing the paired gunners as they backed into the wall, tapping and slicing through nine-by-nineteen millimetre Parabellum rounds. The gale of steel swung into their rising forearm guards. Gunner One gasped, Razorlight poking through a gap between shoulder and rib-plates, reversing, then notching into the underside of the left bicep and opening up the brachial artery. Gunner Two watched their SMG fillet into six neat parts, the magazine clip halved almost perfectly, steel and cartridges all. Seydon broke both faceplate and nose with the curl of his snaking crossguard, dropping with the poleaxed assassin.

On cue, the stress-harried sniper attempted a neat, ill-advised shot. Gunner One, with their bleeding arm, juddered. A sabot round gone wide with the breeze opened a cooked 'tea plate' hole through vertebrate bone, the spinal rod, out through the windpipe and sternal plate past. That brachial severance no longer mattered. Gunner One wasn't going to bleed out. They collapsed soundlessly face forward and dripped pools of hot blood through gaps in the flooring into the narrow crawlspace beneath the van office. The sniper was disregarding comm. discipline, cursing out horror and vehemence.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

“C'mon,” Seydon locked Gunner Two into a waking choke-hold. They were seized from the nape down by a force applying just enough angling pressure to grind and rake the discs making up the throat. A false move or errant word, their neck would crumble in his touch. “C'mon, get it together. That's it. You fethed up my memorial and tried blowing me up. And you're my only insurance your friend with the rifle-cannon doesn't try another pot shot. Right? Wake up!”

Gunner One snorted blood, cartilage, and snot onto their pants. Their voice came out broken and nasally. “Ohhh... Ohhh, lem-lemme go, I'll... I'll feth you up...”

“I could break your neck in half,” The witcher snarled. “Dislocate either arm at the shoulder. Or give my knee a little push into the lumbar and you wouldn't be leaving this place on your own two feet. I don't like torture. But I'm having a bad week. So humour me for a minute: what's your name?”

“Feth you,” They managed a grunt. Seydon's touch popped the left arm free. “Spast! Spast, you fething psycho - “

“What's your name, why are you trying to plug me, got another fireteam? Answer in whatever order. Got fifteen seconds and then I pop the other one.”

“Yes!” Gunner One howled. “Down the camp! Outside! But... But they're regrouping... Gonna come down an angle you can't see and then they'll feth you up - “

“Seven seconds,” Seydon murmured.

“Oh gods... I... Uhh... Please,” They finally whimpered through their broken mouth piece.

“Four, three - “

“Jaine!”

“Alright, Jaine,” Seydon said. The grasp on her right shoulder tensed an iota. “Go on.”

“You should know,” Gunner 'Jaine' gritted out. “You started this. We're just cleaning up now. You people should have known better.”

The Dunaan checked his ears against the outside of the van, listening, before regarding the pseudo-hostage trembling in his arms. “Now you've lost me.”

“It's like I said,” Gunner 'Jaine' went on, warbling through the pain of their hanging limb. “You people fethed up. This is an appropriate response, and you should have seen it coming. We don't stand around to be crossed. You freaks are getting culled, so we can get back to work.”

“I'm still lost. That right arm is feeling a little too comfortable,” Seydon knuckled into the connecting roll of bone and ligament. Gunner 'Jaine' felt their breathe temporarily leave, “Let's back up. Seem to have an idea 'what' I am, but I'm not so sure about you or your buddy with the lightning-cannon. Tell me about that.”

“You stuck in the dark, you stay in the dark. That's all you're getting. Go on, pop the otheerraaagh!”

One hand settled against Gunner 'Jaine's' jawline. The assassin cried, settling into a bodily limp. “Oh man... Oh man... That really hurts.”

“Can't imagine,” He tsked. “Let me get all this straight, before I let you sleep - “

“Shid!”

“You somehow get a bead on me, track me here. Try and murder me with my back turned. Apparently, you got a witchhunt on for my brethren and we're gonna be choking on our own swords, is that right?”

“Yeah!” They choked against his grasp.

“Like hell,” Seydon murmured and clutched their throat in with an elbow crook, tightening the jamming hold until their windpipe clenched. Enough until the gunner's vision swam and darkened, rattling a thick sigh before keeling over unconscious. His grip relaxed, 'Jaine' piling over into a ungainly slump. Again, operating to a beat, another depleted sabot round from below in the dark pine valley notched through the west van wall and cooked the cold air. Lying against his back, kept company by dead or well knocked out mercenaries, Seydon had the time to wonder: what now?

 

[Seydon of Arda]

'Tactical fallback' insinuated a certain combat wisdom, the ability to retreat from a given situation with dignity. Seydon enjoyed no such distinction, face down crawling along snow and log bridges, elbow over knee with his face grimly set, chilled to a blue-blood pallor with his chin raw and bleeding from catching on the hard snowdrift banks. The harnessing had been reversed and turned over so his kit rode like a pack on his backbone. Razorlight and Winterfang, his blades, were held in a hand and used to brush aside ice refuse and snow 'clastics' out of the way.

Gunner 'Jaine' was left to wake alive whenever the effects of their choke-induced nap wore off. They could stand and limp down the mountainside to whatever redoubt their mercenary comrades had erected, but not much else. Not with either arm popped and floating out of the shoulder socket. Seydon entertained a bitter daydream: the assassin hobbling past him, the Dunaan pushing furrows through the snow piles with his brow, a ludicrous pair. The ringing in his ears had gone, replaced by a concussive headache and a sympathetic nosebleed. It would pass and the hyper-active metabolic and accelerated healing capabilities in his body would see to crisp repairs to any and all neural, auditory, and blood vessel damages. Endocrine systems were blunting the majority of aches and pains. An advantage of his mutations: more or less shrugging off a fragmentary grenade concussion.

Keeping under the sniper's field of fire left some time to think. Ignoring the every-so-oft sabot round potshots augering through the cliff-face fencing, whisking a foot or so overhead, Seydon analyzed the predicament. A paramilitary force with obvious backgrounds in competent army or naval service was feuding, maybe one-sided, with his guild. Possessing rapid-deployment abilities, intelligence services, to pin-point and ambush a roving target, a modern arsenal favouring optic camouflage with access to moderate munitions, and possibly comprehensive physiological details into the abilities and potential of mutant monster hunters. Monster hunters they wanted to permanently exterminate. Seydon paused and laid stock still, inching Razorlight out of its scabbard with a thumb. He listened for a long beat: the only heartbeats and breathing that were half-detectable were another click down the mountain side and retreating still. Save for the sniper, he was alone. Breath pooling ice-melt under his neck, he clenched in his teeth and kept crawling.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Stapled to the camp gate was the cook's 'house'. A combination of a stocky kitchen built out of gable planks and a primitive sort of twig and mud mortar, opening into a tented dining hall sizable enough to crew a full camp's compliment. At least thirty or forty bodies, counting the broken maple chairs propped up against petrified seat-legs, hoarfrost caked 'tombstones' poking almost eerily through the fallen hall tarpaulin insulation that once kept the cold out. For the gate, it was a half open steel post and aluminium-link cage, frozen stuck to the stone on rotted tires.

The sniper had recollected their wits and were trying adamantly to at least wing Seydon as he crawled for the gate. One perilous moment, when Seydon felt his hackles rise and willed himself to all but melt through the snow, another sabot round snaked through the fencing and burst a hole through the collapsed tarpaulin. Its wake left boiling air and seared heat into his back. Seydon dared to hop on all fours and gallop, throwing himself down a sharper slope in the camp road, belly sliding. Four mag-rail bullets plumed snow geysers muddied with pebble rock, raining down mud and super heated melt water. It scalded at his cloak and fatigues.

“Shid, shid...” Seydon cursed, rolling in against a snow drift, pawing off the threadbare remnants of the jacket and snow pants. Bare armour would have to do. With quilt and insulation discarded into a 'cotton' pile, the cold took its moment and wove past the leather cuirass work. He laid there a moment, shivering, wincing at an upteenth sabot shell ramming past the cookhouse, turning a gate beam into splitting shrapnel. Wood needles littered into his hair or stuck like quills into exposed skin. The Dunaan hadn't yet considered options dealing with the second fire team that had retreated off the mountain staircase. If he could board the Relentless...

Round number six cracked away. It scythed through fencing, tarpaulin, hissing ice into steam, concussing into the mountainside to leave a neat and spidered indent. Shell slag ran down granite like the stone itself bled with molten mantle. At last, bitten with frost, Seydon reached the camp gate, still bellied out and resting his cheek on a sharp rock bed. His parked vessel lied resting on the disused supply landing pad, past a treacherous and broken staircase. A run across open terrain. Managing to find a line of horizon, Seydon rolled and reached his hand to an eye, counting with his fingers how many hours until sunset. ...Another nine. The darkness could be backfire and become its own hindrance, if the sniper possessed light-amplification kit.

His hand fell to his harness belting, feeling for the handful of small, homemade incendiaries he'd concocted while in hyper-transit. Falling Comet. A traditional Dunaan's recipe that created palm-bombs that burst upon impact, exploding with baradium-like potency, vaporizing and immolating indiscriminately. 'Crowd control'. A portion of its ingredient mix called for an alchemically charged variant of a phosphor allotrope. By itself, when exposed to oxygen, said allotrope would self ignite and produce terrific heat and clouds of brackish, red cloud.

The witcher checked his hand against the slow sun fall, gauged how long he could survive waiting for the sharpshooter to run out of ammunition. And then began tearing his gloved fingers into the palm-bombs hard casement.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

In the end, his solution was to break open a Falling Comet, with a fist wrapped in fire-retardant tarpaulin scavenged from the cook house's skeletal rafters, and run like hell. Seydon rose into a meditative kneel and bandaged one glove with the tarping, ignoring the winter bite gnawing through his armour. The wind chill was like a slap with every breeze. Eyelashes were wetting and clumping with ice. His thumb had found the soft spot where he managed to crack the casing. A depressive pop would expose the bomb contents to cold air and instigate an automatic reaction. Seydon breathed out, settled into a preparing lunge... Broke his thumb into the bomb's heart, held his arm high away and shut his eyes...

Light bled through anyway. Heat like touching a piece of the sun scorched burns up the fabric and steel set in his glove and pauldron. The smoke reminded him of riot gas. A spasm brought on by chemical inhalation triggered clenching in the muscle and tissue of the esophageal lining, choking him. Over the roar of wind and crackling of pebbles skidding out from under his boot toes, was the hiss of rushing phosphor and the dull scream of livid, contorting fire.

Blind and choking, Seydon groped for the mountain wall and did his best half-run, half-skip, full stumble down the stairway. Every third step was crumbled or missing altogether. With eyes closed, the threat of Contruum's crag gales blowing the cover of the phosphor smoke aside was a real threat. The witcher just trusted, pawing forward gamely, teeth clenched against the next hazard: as blind and bewildered as their target, the sniper began plugging sabot rounds through the chemical fog.

Depleted uranium had no smell. Instead, there was a tang of melting shell casing and stone cooked into brimstone, shattering onto Seydon's path. Whip-cracks and snapping air sounded constantly. One round burrowed terrifically close, spraying a fine cirrus of stone dust and chipping granite into his face. Fine razor cuts opened across his cheek. A mental check put him now less than ten meters from the landing pad, where the Relentless awaited in restless idle. The staircase began bottoming out, levelling into a somewhat straight path cutting between angles of jutting, arrowhead boulders. Simultaneously, the heat and light held aloft in his right hand was beginning to lessen.

Seydon blinked back his vision. The phosphor cloud milked out the world. He felt enveloped, caught in a tight sulphuric bubble, material existence only a fragile concept where the cloud hazed the mountainous view. He could trace the thin sonic trails left in wake by the buzzing electro-rail shots, feeling dazed and immaterial, watching a magazine's worth of ammunition furrow and clip through the mist. Ahead and angled with a war hawk's impatient glower, dark and winged, the Relentless awaited on clawed stanchions.

He let go of the fragmenting bomb shell and what was left of the melting tarp, oozing past his gloved knuckles like waxen butter, running and ducking forward under the vessel belly. The debarkation hatch was sealed but the attached entry ramp was till tongued out onto the concrete. And blinking. Seydon stopped from releasing the

Along the ramp's cargo grooving and mag-locked to each landing claw, half a dozen packets of taped C9 and platiquo Kentex winked to a uniform beat. Guerrilla explosives, Jorus called them. Black market staples and surprisingly easy to procure for any serious insurgency group, or mercenary outfit with enough budget left from overhead to pay. Seydon remembered the second fireteam sent to provide backup for their comrades assaulting the logging clamp. And how, oddly, they decided against pressing any advantage and whisked down the mountainside.

All at once, the tell-tale status node-lights darkened. Seydon breathed out, clamping panic aside with a fierce nerve exercise, backpedalling. Boot soles nearly tearing off at the seams, he ran. The vessel pad overlooked a fifty meter sheer drop bottoming out onto a hard blanket of old glacial snow. The beginning of a half mile of open tundra ground between the Fang and the ring of taiga forest. He put his toes to the cliff edge and leapt into silence, enjoying momentary weightlessness before gravity began gently tugging like a hand at his bones. Behind, the Relentless vaporized, fireballs blooming on stalks of hellfire and wreathing leaves of smoke. The scorched cockpit view-screen popped free of the forward hook-nose and ploughed into the falling Dunaan. A dark shape wind-milled almost brokenly, and disappeared into the snows below...

 

[Seydon of Arda]

II​

Too long spent half buried up to his pectorals, looking for all the world like a lounging swimmer stuck in a frame of water treading. Frigidity leached up through his waist, entire tracts of blood vessels and muscle tissue, ligament connections and nerve ducts, fat-less musculature, and bluing skin all numb. Memory likened it to a story Rosa once shared, under therapeutic duress and needing someone to shut up and listen. Her miscarriage after Roche. The procedure called for a nerve clamp agent to be induced via spinal injection and then carried down to her ankles. It was a mixture of many horrid sensations, simultaneously divorced of her legs and yet still capable of fine motor control. Rosa recalled watching her toes moving with a thought but unable to feel the pull and tug of muscle and bone.

Seydon woke with a burning need for breath. An inch of snow around his body melted with the introduction of his physical heat, before cooling over again and hardening into a sheathe of ice. He was stuck in the deep drift almost up to his collarbone. In a nick of luck, the canopy screen that knifed into his backside mid-air landed atop him with a bit of head room to spare, sunk into the drift with him but acting as a convenient awning against gales and snowfall. Flakes leaked through sieve cracks in the ultra-plasteel, webbed with stress fractures, the screen edging darkened to a fine, jet soot. Amber light filtered through, painting the tundra slope as if viewed from within a drop of pine resin. Seydon fought to right his senses, his trains of thought, trying to slough off a hundred considerations and worries threatening to tailspin his nerves into a panic.

First: he lived. There was daylight to spare and save for the numbing across his lower torso trunk and legs, major physical traumas were absent. An incredulous miracle. Seydon murmured to himself and all the nameless gods that were his thanks for a touch of benediction. But, they traded life for loss. The Relentless was torched turadium and blast-swelled superstructure. It hung like a broken pennant over the side of the high landing outcrop, bleeding smoke, it's forward conical 'beak' replaced by an open, fire-gutted cross-section of the interior decking. He guessed the hyperdrive motivator matrix was cooked. There were still sympathetic explosions popping and whizzing, as fuel lines ignited independently of the already detonated tank wells. Another fireball arched out of the Relentless' molten spine, echoing guttural howls of tormented alloys and fusing circuit boards. Seydon's accumulated arsenal, a little treasure trove dedicated to refining his take on Dunaan arts, was gone.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He needed to regain mobility. The thought of transorbital transportation was excised, replaced by a cold burn of survival logic. Big picture later. The small portrait Seydon now dealt held the possible presence of more unknown mercenary killers, that fething sharpshooter, the issue of impending night, and no appreciable usage of his hips or distal extremities. He took stock of kit his harnessing still possessed. Most was lost, blown out of their leather and chain anchoring by the force of the Relentless' detonation. The harness straps themselves were torn ragged, to be jettisoned as soon as he freed himself of the snow. He patted down one shoulder strap still intact. ...One unbroken potion vial. The thick glass had held. Seydon uncorked the neck and held the vial up, scenting the solution mixture.

And near gagged. The Drehag decoction. A mutagenic distillate taken from the ephemeral remains of an Otherworld wraith. Imbibing lead to an increase of bodily heat, either to sweat out a particular potent virulence infecting a Dunaan's body, counteract the effects of extreme cold, or negate 'ice powers' that some monsters possessed. In theory, it could flash-heat his tissues and restore blood flow, restoring feeling and nerve function. Given its ingredients, with extreme dehydration being a potential side-effect, the Drehag potion was relegated to extreme scenarios. Seydon tested the give in the ice and snow clamping around his ribcage. A cold Contruum arctic night approached. Need outweighed caution.

Automatically, all physical processes in Seydon's homoeostatic physiology began slowing. Cat-eyes hardened tight before widening. The sensation was akin to piloting, ground-car racing, seemingly in control of every fine process. Nerve-endings were a white-hot tracery running deep through tissue and bone. The musculature was a super-taut mechanical system responding with all the fine attunement of a mythical machine. The condition was meditative, standard practice and procedure. His mind's eye ran a physical diagnostic, perceiving his own digestive constitution, feeling his stomach as balled ice gurgling with putrescence and bodily acids. Seydon recalled the first time taking his potions under Ajax's stern tutelage. He squeezed the vial neck, tugged the cork free with his teeth, and drank down the ruby-coal solution.

It washed down like hot whiskey without the languorous taste. The decoction fell into the pit of his stomach and churned, seething. Colours like congealed blood and clotted bone writhed inside of the skin of his eyeballs. All at once, the sensation of nerve-fire spread out from his midriff and roiled to each extremity. His head rocked, feeling the brain cavity alter into an oven. The pins-and-needles feeling inside the meat of his legs transmogrified into knives-and-pliers. Constricted blood vessels were forced open. Heart rate rocketed, the organ convulsing and bumping against his ribcage, taxed with speeding hot blood to rewarm his legs and waist. The potion had effectively transmuted his internal circulatory system into a temporary microwave. The only noticeable cost was pain.

And drenching sweat. The warmth radiating through his skin was enough to bleed past layers of quilt and treated leather. Around him, snow was rapidly melting into draining ice-water and steam. When enough agony had subsided, Seydon tested the mobility of his toes. Up through the foot arch into the ankle, giving his whole legs a sure pump against the sheathe of ice slurry. His hands gnashed into the drift and pushed down. It took some ungainly moments, inching forward and wiggling for purchase, suddenly glad the boiling inside his body relaxed portions of hip and lumbar muscle. Seydon executed a severe arch with a last push. His spine rubbed up against the fallen viewscreen canopy still idling in place overhead. Knees, boot heel, toes climbed free, and the Dunaan loosed a heavily trembling exhale, sprawling onto his side.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

He might die, Seydon considered. Not of the decoction; cold was already crawling back into his bones, slowly edging a lead blanket of frost-chill across his armour and epidermis beneath. The witcher just laid with heat, sweat, and thin blood bleeding out his nose into the snow. Exhaustion was beginning to ache in his limbs. Again, brought on by the cold. The black pine tree line beyond the hundreds of meters of desolate mountain 'shin' tundra waited. Both inviting and grim. He so wanted to rest on his mattress of snow-melt and sleep out the night. Twilight turned the profile of the Fang into a slash of grey ink stroked against black-cloud canvas. ...Sleeping in the open meant death, though. Even if he submerged into deanimation, overnight he'd cake into a solidified pillar. Growling, the Dunaan righted himself and sat up under the canopy.

Checked his harnesses. ...Precious little. Paracord and steel wire, a one-inch punch knife, a Merrill-patented 'survival card', his armour... And the twin swords Winterfang and Razorlight. And a handful of his own wits, for all their good. Glancing back, he guessed the rest of his equipment was strewn across the outcrop face, buried in the draping snow banks hanging off the rocks, or stuck beneath portions of heat-warped hull panelling and interior ducting exploded from the Relentless' innards. Necessity or desperation would require him to return with make-do implements to dig out what was potentially salvageable. After sticking a bare hand out beneath the canopy's lid, checking for the wind direction, Seydon stood up and pushed the viewscreen shelter aside.

A morbid expectation counted on the sharpshooter knowing their target was rustling under the plasteel, and blowing out Seydon's heart with a finishing sabot round the moment he emerged exposed. He dared it. The evening wind was a bracing thirty-kilometre an hour blast out of the nor'east. The darkness edging over the cowl of the Fang was gaining speed, snarfing daylight a minute at a time. Seydon willed himself to still for a rough quarter of a minute, scanning the tree-line, its forestry extending to either horizon. Time slowed. Like an hourglass flooded with tar. Individual motes of sand hanging suspended, freezing reality's passage, leaving Seydon caught in an eternity of wind and silence.

Nothing. The gusting pushed little drifts of hard ice flakes across his boots. Seydon noted he felt the cold on his face and throat again. Still alive, still standing unmolested. Before his next packet of thoughts could gather, he was leaning into a charging sprint. Long strides clearing a meter at a time. Breathing exercises to minimize cardiovascular exhaustion kicked in, rhythmic panting. The Dunaan ran with the wind. Out of the wind. He left the gale behind and turned into a gunmetal shadow speeding across the flattened glacial plain.

Ice dirtied into tracts of peat and muskeg. Chemical stenches of deep vegetative decay and natural methane pockets stank up at him. Quite suddenly there was stubborn, prickling underbrush and fields of arctic fiddleheads, bowed from hoarfrost. Seydon ducked, lancing past a copse of young birch, skidding to a slower jog. Beds of old pine needles, all the colour of Asahi lacquer, split and crackled under his footfalls. The smell of evergreen and sugar-sap filled him. Snowflakes coasted down lines of snow weighed pine branches, lending to the sense of pause and calm. Seydon turned until he found the faint, ghosting 'fuzz' of the sun and held his fingers against it to the horizon line. Two digits. Roughly, two hours, locally. Enough minutes to venture deeper into the woodland, choose a ground to shelter, and erect a temporary fire.

The Dunaan rolled the tension out of his shoulders and swung Razorlight free, half-swording the blade in his hands. Effecting a makeshift 'spear'. One pace at a time, he walked down into the forest dark, leaving the crisp arctic lumen behind.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

It was an animal warren, abandoned over some six bestial generations, left forgotten in a hill constructed out of hard, crawler infested loam and intersecting root knots that slowly merged together to compliment the acreages of standing long pines. Seydon had crawled in backwards, scraping his rump against paw-worn contours in the packed earth, dusty, dirty, but still smooth. He could barely sit upright. The entrance ran as an oblong tunnel for three meters, opening into a more expansive den, replete with a corner of marrow-sucked bones belonging to a host of small mammals. Seydon had marched for almost the whole two hours of falling daylight until he'd almost tripped into the warren hole. Now, with his sword, was cutting and smoothing a ventilation chimney up through to the hill top.

Deadened root ends were snipped with the punch-knife and compiled aside for later. Seydon crawled and dragged an armful of unwanted earth back outside, retrieving the punch knife. He chose one particularly stout pine. Bark was raked away and exposed a section of naked wood no larger his thumb pad. With the knife, took care notching an inward and angled V to the wood, snapping a young branch free from a high rung and stripping it down to its natural, smoothed finish. The branch fed into the V, sticking in place. Of all the kit lost on the shanks of the Fang, Seydon still held possession of an old, bent mug. He positioned its mouth until the hanging stick hovered in, then covered it against snowfall.

What was sorely missed was a trusty wood-axe. Razorlight was inefficient at log cutting. The dark took the semi-permanent winter and amplified its killing aspects. Cold sliced in deep, made his blood ache and throb. Colour froze into a nighttime pallet of gamma blues, jet green, and violet. Once, hacking into a log piece, Seydon thought he picked up a branch snap four kilometres south. Deeper into the wood then he'd yet gone. Attempts at picking out breathing or heart-beats turned up fruitless. He returned to the frustration of blunting his blade at the wood, until he judged he'd enough resources for the night. The mug was checked, re-covered, his bundles of crudely sectioned fire fuel tied with lengths of corded weeds and dragged back into the warren.

Self-feeding fires came in several ancient configurations. For his space, and need, Seydon decided on a pyramid. Larger logs to the bottom, growing progressively smaller, until the zenith was a cover of blow-dried dead plant matter, root shavings, and old dandelion cotton not yet taken by the wind. Luck chanced the witcher kicking his boot into a flint shard. No longer or thicker than his thumb, it would do regardless. Flint struck off the edging of Winterfang, casting silvertine sparks onto the top table of tinder. Diminutive, choking flame scallops ate rapidly through the offering, catching into the secondary layers of kindling, onto the third layer of small logs that began glowing rosily. Seydon crawled back to the entry hole and plugged it over with a makeshift blanket of fallen pine boughs still rife with dead needles, retreating back to the smokey warmth.

He'd not freeze tonight. The morning was a different story. He settled into a wider groove dug out with hands and punch-knife, out of sight of anything potentially tripping the hole cover to peer in. Razorlight laid as a weight of killing steel across his lap, cross-legged with the point and crossguard balanced to either boot toe. Cat-eyes closed up tight, going through the instinctive processes for easing both weary mind and body into a half-sleep, setting the circadian chronometer to an hour after dawn. ...Any thoughts beyond immediate survival needs, food, shelter, implements and security, were discontinued. There was no luxury of time for any of it. Who those mercenaries were, who they answered to, what their agenda was concerning exterminating individual Dunaan, and what his kin had done to earn that ire would wait.

Then something unbidden but no less automatic, no less tempering, crossed over his mind's eye. A quiet dragonfly of memory, zipping close, humming loud as an afterburner, gone with a half-lidded blink. Rosa Gunn, standing on the cross-rung of an Ardan shove-spear at low tide, a fishing javelin attached with line in one hand. Facing him, as he trained on the beach, sweating out the enormous summer heat, running exercises, combat drills, potion concoctions. He remembered her naked tan. Cinnamon flesh bringing out the dark raven in her hair, violet eyes. So happy and relaxed and fit, wearing crowns of seashells made by local Sendan. He'd finally divorced her from the galaxy. That place didn't deserve her. She skewered herself a roan perch and strung it up next to the other dozen caught over the morning.

It all blinked away. In his partial sleep, Seydon felt the cold and damp again. Hands tightened on the steel and handle of his Razorlight. One way or another, he'd go home. Forest breezes rustled at the warren hole, tickling the dead needles. A host of midnight creatures called out to the moonless dark. Somewhere, an animal loosed a howl. Seydon smiled: he knew exactly how it felt.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Morning.

Breakfast were mouthfuls of cold water supplemented by a hand's breadth of coarse fiddleheads and a nearby scraggly dewdrop berry tree. Time was a half hour following dawn, Seydon clearing a patch of underbrush free of the night's snowfall, stretching out and running fast cardiovascular sets to quicken his wakefulness. Overnight, the fire took its fill, dwindling into a low coal bed. And while the warren held some advantages as shelter, a low earthen profile and ease of camouflage, his eyes were set for the south. Contruum's settled population were crowded along a fat band occupying the equatorial latitudes, marrying high-technology with old crop practices, eyeing a one day wholly self-sufficient people.

It meant crossing the far north wastes. Until Seydon either came across transportation or made it to a city on foot. Long term habitation was not in the stars. Briefly, chewing on a fiddlehead, he considered making a return to the debris field. Scavenge was tempting. Yet, if these merc-types were as dogged as they seemed dedicated, it'd mean risking open ground without cover and no benefit of another Falling Comet stunt. Progress now meant improvisation, adaptation. Seydon drew in a chilly breath, glad at least to still have his swords' weight strapped in.

The itinerary came mechanically. The survival card wasn't much thicker than an ACC credit-bar, trading plastiques and nano-meter circuitry for solid, polished duranium. The card itself was roughly the length and width of a standard masonry brick, cut out with various shapes that could be snapped free and utilized as on-demand, emergency equipment, in lieu of other kit or lacking survival gear. A multi-tool axe-head, a spare arrowhead, a leather awl, nine fish hooks, a small dual-sided saw, a handful of snare locks, a small game arrowhead set with a secondary bar of sharp steel behind the scalloped head, gig tridents, and most importantly: tweezers. A makeshift wood axe was fashioned from the card piece and a notched length of a hardwood Seydon didn't know, binding the steel to the wood with what steel line he felt comfortable sparing. With the arrowheads, he managed in scavenging several yew sticks and old owl plumage left behind in a discarded nest. The bow itself was trickier.

Stripped down paracord doubled for the bow's string lashing, after selecting a prime piece of supple willow fallen from a tree head. By midday, with the aid of the punch knife and rescued leather harvested from the ruin of his harnesses, the wood was shaved, strung, bound at the grip with the cannibalized leather, his two arrows tied beside Winterfang's scabbard. The axe waited at his hip, slung from a spare loop, the fishooks and saws, tridents and snare locks buttoned up in a pants pocket. Seydon again put a wet finger to the wind and checked for the noon sun, a halogen discus notched by the brow of the tall, tall Fang. On Contruum, polar directions were gauged easily with the sun. If it warmed your face, directly, you were strolling undoubtedly north. If it warmed at your nape and shoulders, then south. The Dunaan turned until he could see his shadow directly. Before he faced sunfall, he'd need to concoct a kind of portable shelter, the means to transport it, reliable fire starting kit, more water, and food both meat and vegetable.

In the midst of a Contruum arboreal stuck in six month winter.

Seydon slaked his parch with the last sips of the old tin mug, spinning it on a finger. Old Marshal Ember used to brag of opportunities such as this, the testing of Mandalorian mettle against hostile terrain, terrifically limited resources, with just bushcraft and sheer guts.

“Make you proud yet,” He murmured and set off.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

III​

​

Each subsequent day cycle was folded into a flexible routine: wake, pack, travel, procure subsistence, adopt basic tools when time allowed, and manage shelter before the Contruum winter night fell. A discarded bluewood ash branch now double as both fishing gig, hunting spear, and walking stick. The haft of a shed antler was notched and rope-knotted with a chipped flint blade. A quiver was sewn with a combination of plant fibre, spare threading taken out of his pant-legs, and curled birch bark. Willow branches were converted into the most primitive arrow sets, fletched with leaves and hardened by fire heat. Tracking and felling a lone cervine buck yielded precious takes of flank meat and fat, transforming the buckskin into a crude combination of rucksack and mobile fridge, packed with ice, cold river stones, and still bloody flesh. No time for bleeding the creature. His digestive and immune systems could handle the fresh ingestion. Seydon still washed up with handfuls of melt water, rubbing his teeth and gums down with twig brushes.

Worry followed him with the snow. For the first four days, Seydon hiked to a break-neck pace, trying and failing to stay out of the oncoming teeth of another daily snowstorm. He hunkered down in the pit of an old ursine squat, tenting with pine branches and pieces of saved buckskin rolls. Between fighting to stave off frostbite and keep his torso trunk warm, he listened against the gales. Two score small heartbeat profiles mostly, critter mammals holed up like him. Yet, on three occasions, he thought there detectable signatures just on the tenth kilometre range. Not the heavy drumbeats belonging to some of Contruum's herbivores but tell-tale sentients. The signatures blurred out as quickly as they could be perceived and the winds brought nothing to scent. No spoor, gun oils, the metallic odours of brass shell casings, ozone smells generated by stealth fields.

Come the third day, Seydon woke and was greeted by a rare empty sky. Kept trudging south, following the wake of the storm, impeded by deep snows clinging almost up to his arm-pits. Animal runs left by cervine flocks helped knife through the deeper fields, and where the foliage was mature, leapt from tree to tree. Terrain mixed rolling knolls and prairie flatness, dipping into sheer V-canyons requiring hours of bare rock climbing to traverse. At times, the landscape broke, skutes of flat-top mesas and the shard profiles of lesser mountains. Peaked by caps of permanent glacial floes and bearded with evergreens. Where he could, Seydon washed in creeks and streams, bearing the raw temperatures. Lessening spoor scents, bodily odours keyed to natural pheromone discharges and sweat, was critical in hiding from potential prey. Dunaan had some inhibitors introduced alchemically but the effect wasn't perfect.

For a week, he traced along the shoreline belonging to a deep-set river. It stitched southward, providing a natural suit of passage through miles of increasingly rugged scenery. Meals came from freshwater reptiles somehow adapted to managing the sub-zero waters; snapping bullet-turtles, dragon salamanders, and even the white meat of a fat alligator that tried wrestling him to the riverbed. Teeth and hide were scavenged, gut converted to sterile string, closing the bite wound it crunched across his midriff. Supper bubbled and spat with grilling fat, as Seydon rolled the 'gator meet with a primitive rotisserie.

The river turned its course west and left the Dunaan. He spent the last morning dressed in skivvies and waded barefoot in the stream shallows, stabbing into perch and pike, leaving with a hooked bundle of fish drying across his shoulder. Again, he paused short of the woodland and listened. ...A faint handful of far, far away blood beats, silencing into ambient forest creaks and moans in the timber and brush. Seydon checked that Razorlight loosed from its scabbard and turned back to trudging. At the day's end, stepping towards the sunset, he encountered man-made structure. Razor-wire fence, cordoning off an overgrown acreage. There was a break in the tangled steel string, shattered fencing post, cooked by bolt-out-of-the-blue lightning. Whatever cattle ranges once roaming on the property had escaped, maybe sometime before his great-grandparents had yet to be born. An acreage meant ranch-land, meant potentially spending the night under whatever was left of the barn, sheds, or home. His sword cut the wire with a melodic twang.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Maintenance roads were penned into empty fields, a vast plaid quilt spotted with emptied grain elevators and feeding towers. All paths led to the fencing and quit there, leading Seydon to think once there had been a dedicated landing pad. Supplies and equipment, ranch hands, virtually ever piece of the property had been ferried in through sub-orbital transports. He stepped over half buried cattle squeeze chutes and rusting, barred livestock panels. Grass weeds, wild wheat, black mustard grew everywhere. Ratty marsupials in their hundreds fled out of his way through the tall growth. The emptied durasteel bodies of ground-cars lied in the road ditches. Every detail looked abandoned and sad, dressed in peeling industrial paints, eaten and hollowed out with rust or woodlice and termites.

The ranch house in question was enormous. Built like a longhouse in style with three tall floors, kept under arched terraces and hard steepled roofing. Without his senses, Seydon could have still detected the heavy sawdust must and other stenches of wood rot all the way to fencing. Like the now far-away logging camp, they utilized local resources in construction. Damp winters had gotten in under the shingles and solar plating, using ice-expansion to worm the joists and rafters. Seasonal wear had tore open wounds in the roof, rotting the shingle tiling, cracking the industrial tars and glues meant to seal the layers in place against the weather. Approaching the pathway through a fence gate, Seydon's footfalls disturbed a flock of nesting fowl.

He wandered inside. The front door was gone. It sprawled on the hardwood inside over a twisting, ragged hank of ancient rug. The coat room was spacious, devastated. Teak walls vandalized by hydraulic hammers, the plastic jacket hangers strewn underfoot. His eyes blinked and adjusted to the low, filmy light, amplifying colour, detail, and resolution. Dunaan could nearly see in higher stratas of light bands. Dark meant nothing to him. Seydon toed forward a foot at a time, raising the spear-end of his walking stick.

Most of the common rooms were bare, aside layers of common household trash, and the torn, broken forms of empty furnishings. Glass, shattered ceramics, torn up threading, cutlery and cooking implements, emptied greaseboard boxes, spent sluground shells, smears of madly painted condiments washed and dried brown on panelled walls. Most baseboards were gnawed through in places and hosting families of field mice, rats, and the odd snake den. Cockroaches skittered out of his way. Seydon paused and looked into the kitchen: the appliances were gone. Emptied drawers were piled in a corner. The pantry was similarly empty.

The second house floor was in an identical state of disarray and looting. Out of city squatters once made a home in one of the bedrooms, leaving only behind crumpled food tins and a broken chemical toilet. Someone who'd lost their mind left scrawling messages in fading crayon. The third floor was inaccessible: collapsed stairwell, done in by a localized fire, and then crushed by piled on snows. A breeze whistled through each crack in the walling and broken windows. It howled downstairs, waking an inhuman chorus of shifting, groaning, and ticking.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

In the backyard, he cut a swathe of grass and laid out rings of scavenged furniture legs, setting up the night's fire. While the fish cooked beside the last of the gator meat, Seydon rolled out a length of buckskin and took stock of his belongings. Lost two of the card hooks, replaced them with fish bone. The flint knife was looking worn and the axe haft bad been shattered and repaired twice with wood spars and catgut. That twin-sided saw had long gone dull but was kept for emergency scrap. He was close to running low on his steel wire and the paracord was getting threadbare, the snare locks likewise bent and hammered out more times than Seydon wished to admit. Come morning, he'd search the ranch house and the acreage for salvage.

Fish and gator were supplemented with young garlic chives, cucumbers still growing in a now wild greenhouse. Seydon spared himself waiting and collected winter dew pooling from a few distended pockets of old tarp at the edge of the yard. Every lean supper and cold sleep felt like a kicking reminder. The Dunaan paced his fire as he ate, looking from the house to the fields. ...Fish was chewing tough tonight. Every second bite cracked thin cartilage ribs. It grew difficult keeping his thoughts fixed on the present, when a great deal of unknowns begged questioning. The mercenaries, the ambush, his flight through wilderness, how it all pieced together in totality. And that lingering oppressiveness that crept up on his shoulders while trekking. Always turning, expecting to find a host of bright eyes peering out from the wilderness but always greeted with nothing. It was a faceless enemy that'd come from seemingly nowhere. And their dedication to wiping him out at the camp, going so far as to employ a pair of fire teams, a demolition's operator, and one nasty sharp shooter, told they did not work with 'chances'.

Portions of supper, primarily the gator flesh, were rolled in tinfoil from a roll discovered in the kitchen. He chose a far bedroom on the second floor with a view onto the main acreage road and relatively clear sight to the distant cordon fence. The unwelcome weight on the futon roll left splayed on the patchy boxspring shooed a rat family into their secondary hovel. Providence had left the bedroom door still anchored to its old brass and aluminium hinging, an archaic touch in a day and age of automatic servo-doors and hatchway modules. Seydon dragged a fallen ceiling beam across the knob and laced it with strung spoons, forks. As basic as counter-intrusion systems went.

Sleep arrived and escaped him in close, quarter-hour intervals. Soon, Seydon gave up, blinking at the plaster ceiling and its thousand crumbling points. A colony of firebugs scaled paper-mucus nests spit glued into the upper joists. Ant-like, they followed pheromone pathways to gaps in the near window and escaped to wing and dance in the cold. Outside was infinite starlight. Fireflies and stars mingled under skeins of aurora fire, shimmering at passing solar breezes, a magnetic touch that coaxed through the atmosphere and tickled a breeze across the ranch land. Wheat, grasses and wild mustard rustled. Grain mice chirped and sang. He listened against nasal grunts and hoof plants belonging to a passing boar pack chewing and squealing its way through the property. Self-note: find their tracks, get the drop on one of the younger males, more supple meat, and collect a convenient meal haul for tomorrow's supper.

If the boar pack didn't turn and gore him to death against a copse. And morning itself felt closer than anticipated. Seydon had been taking care to attune his circadian rhythms with the slight second changes coming with the sunrise and sunset. He blinked and watched a bright frosty glow begin bleeding light over the bedroom windowsill. Blinked again, running a mental check, his relative physical position in relation to what he understood of Contruum's solar movements. Sunrise was northerly, sweeping south along a 'bend', falling past the south pole every evening. This light was emerging in the east. Seydon bolted to his feet and knees, daring a peak through the window's broken glass framing.