My Beach

When I escaped the town, the sun was beginning to descend. My watch told me that it was 2 in the afternoon. By three I had emptied all of my water into the desert, no longer willing to trust the water I had collected for the hunt.

I was lucky enough to not have had anything during the course of the day. I skipped lunch and I left my water untouched. However, by the time I was out in the desert for a few hours I had begun to feel how thirsty I was. As the sun set, I was using my cane to help me keep moving. I was tired, thirsty, and utterly defeated when I finally collapsed under the weight of my suit and the stars above.

I lay there, in the middle of nowhere, breathing through a dry mouth, trying to suck moisture from the air itself, to no avail. The moon smiled down at my misery, and I imagined that the stars danced with it in the sky. How long I lay there staring at the night sky, I can’t tell. All I know is that at some point, I looked off to my side and saw a figure walking toward me.

I had just spent gods know how long watching the moon and stars mock me with their movement, so I wasn’t entirely surprised when the silhouette approaching me resembled an angel, but I was afraid. An honest to god angel in the middle of this godforsaken desert. With a wingspan as large as my body and a build larger than anything I’ve seen before. I was struck numb with fear, but I simply couldn’t move. I watched the figure stride towards me, until he came close enough for me to see him clearly in the moonlight.

He was a large man, that much I could see even from afar, built like a bear and carrying himself as if he were acutely aware of that fact. His head was covered in a short mat of dark hair, covered by a loose cloak. On his shoulders sat two great vultures, whose wings made his shadow into the angel that startled me earlier. They stared at me, their beady eyes boring past my flesh into my very soul, and my fear, briefly abated, revived as I realized what I was looking at.

He spoke, his voice sharp, accented, and laced with inherent danger. I tried scrambling to my feet, but I wound up only flopping around in the sand. I was just too tired to offer any resistance. He went onto one knee and I gripped my cane, plans forming and falling apart in my dehydrated brain as the figure continued speaking. He talked about how pitiful I looked now, and how contrasting it was to when I dropped in this morning. He picked at my suit and taunted me for being so scared of a wet spot in the desert.

I got angry, I tried getting up again, and I managed to get up on two feet, leaning on my cane, my weight causing it to sink into the sand with each small movement. I still had to look up at the behemoth before me, but I could now at least talk and glare at him without looking like a beaten dog.

He told me that my target had left, vacated reality through a nasty hole in the middle of the desert. It turns out the he wasn’t only bothering our outpost, but also stealing biomatter from the land around me, the land of this monstrous thing. And it seems like I’m not the only one having trouble catching the Towerborn. He’s apparently been evading the gaze of these vultures for many months now.

So I stood and talked to a feathered monster, and after a while, I agreed to accept his help in returning me to civilization for aid in tracking and killing the Towerborn. And thus I returned to the outpost, relatively safe and sound, on the wings of the Convocation.

I still can't believe that happened to me, at all. The bosses are going to be on my ass for this, but it might be the only way to get things done with this job.

- Have a Nice Day