Grane – Day One: “Wither…”
She had forgotten how old she had become. Time had lost all meaning. The hourglass lay smashed and her sands strewn all across creation. Weeks? Months? Years? Did she even age anymore, or had she become eternal like the desert she walked? She was just another grain of sand in the ceaseless storm, and so that had become her name: Grane. Short and blunt, just like her.
This world was once something else before the collapse. Before sand flooded from the heavens like tears from giants. Only stories of that world remain. A time when sprawling metropolises blanketed the earth, housing unfathomable numbers of people, crammed together like livestock before the slaughter. They say men were ignorant back then. They built their towers to touch the sky, but that was not their place. They pierced the heavens and the heavens bled. They bled sand until the peaks of those very towers were the only visible remnants of the world that was. At least, that’s how the tales are told.
Grane walked alone, tired and hungry; the curse of the survivor. She was just a girl when the blight came to her village and brought its wrath down upon it, leaving nothing but her and the bereaved. The villagers became empty shells; men and women that had forgotten what they were. They stood still and quiet, as if statues. At first Grane stood with them. She was confused by the idles of her parents. What else was she supposed to do? Eventually she left, and she had walked alone ever since. A wanderer and a hunter of the evils that had stricken her family. Welcomed everywhere with a problem and shooed out of anywhere safe. She was just a phantom in the night, barely more than the bereaved themselves. Again her name rang apt, she was just another grain of sand.
It had become the girl’s mission to unravel the blight. She was too young to care about revenge for those she had lost, but rather it was the only way she could find to gain a sense of purpose. She was touched by the blight, There was no semblance of a of a normal life for her now. There was no illusion of peace. This was all she could do to keep herself moving. This was all she could do to keep herself motivated enough to continue to exist.
She had learned of a witch who had lived since the fall of the old world. This was this first time in memory she had gained a destination. It was an odd comfort for a hunter of the sands. The concept was so foreign that she was afraid of getting used to it, for it was never a certainty that it would arrive again. She had tracked rumors of the witch, first to the south, then to the west. The rumors had become more vivid lately, evolving from tales whispered around the fire to scare good behavior into the young, to claims of real encounters. Perhaps then, she thought, her destination was finally nearing.
Her mouth was dry, her lips cracked, and her canteens were running empty. She should have turned around two days ago, for her rations would no longer last the return trip back to the last enclave.
She pressed on however, because she feared losing the witch’s scent more than she feared the slow death of thirst.
The beast of exhaustion was not something any man could tame, and so Grane sat down pressed against the shade of a partially unearthed boulder. She drank the slightest drop from her canteen and breathed out a tired sigh. A gentle shiver ran through her soles, and brought her back to attention. The slightest vibration could mean nothing, but this was no place for risks. Grane hopped up upon the rock that once granted her rest and drew her bow. The sand danced below her, unsettled from its rest just as much as she had been. The beast would have to wait, it seems she wouldn’t have rest today.
Grane lifted a stone from her side-bag and threw it as hard as she could at the ground below her. A creature emerged from the sands to snatch its prey, but found only a rock instead. It was a pitiable creature, humanoid in its form, but with mere slits for eyes or ears. It had dark speckled skin that was either scaled or simply ingrained with sand. The creature sniffed in the air and found Grane’s scent. It snarled teeth like knives and clicked together its shovel-like fingernails. Grane loosed an arrow and it found the creature’s neck. 4 arrows left. That was all she had managed to make the last time she found a source of wood.
The creature was down, but it was unlikely to be alone. Grane had met with these before, and they always hunted in packs. The folk where she was born called them the “khachin-ardyn,” but they had many names in many places. Someone once told her that they were once humans, but unlike the bereaved whose humanity had been taken from them, the khachin-ardyn had given it up willingly as an offering to the sands, for after the fall of the old world they chose a better chance of survival over sanity and humanity.
Whatever they were made no difference to Grane. She would take out any that threatened her. As predicted more of them burst from the sands from every side of her. 5 more heads for 4 arrows. Grane managed to fire twice before they could find their bearings in the surface world. Two more targets down, two more arrows used. Behind her, one leaped up onto the boulder. Grane turned and drew the short blade she kept on her back. A slice to the stomach and the beast fell back down to the sands. Before she could react, another was upon her. Wielding its arm like a club it knocked Grane off of her feet and down to the sands below. Before she could get up, she had been pinned. Sharp nails ripped into her sides, and a hungry maw chomped at her face. She managed to move her head in time and her foe got a mouthful of sand rather than a mouthful of her. She swung her elbow with all her might and hit the back of the khachin’s head. Dazed for a moment, Grane rolled it off of her, grabbed its chin and the side side of its head, and with one motion and a sickening crack, broke the thing’s neck.
She scrambled to her feet and searched for her weapons. The ground rumbled as she spotted her blade. The final khachin-ardyn emerged under her as she tried to dive away. It caught her leg and she hit the ground not much further than where she left it. She reached out for her blade as jagged teeth tore into her leg. A desperate whirl was all she could manage. She swung the blade with a scream and hit the side of her foe’s head. Her strength was not enough, the blade had chopped into the skull, but not enough to kill. The khachin recoiled and Grane scurried away towards the boulder. She didn’t have time to climb it, but she sat back against it.
The final beast leaped at her and she thrust out her blade as well as she could. It skewered the khachin in the neck. It looked right at her, as far as she could tell, and snarled as it slid slowly down the blade, painting it a thick coat of red. Grane turned away as the vile slobber of the thing poured out of its mouth and speckled her hood with filth. It finally died as its neck met the hilt of her blade. Grane threw it off of her and pulled the sword back out. She stood up and with a pained hobble made sure they were all dead. She was no scholar but she had yet to find something that could live without its head. After dressing her wounds and retrieving her arrows from the hides of her fallen enemies, Grane took one more sip of water. That would have to be her reward for a job well done. It was time to push further on. The witch couldn’t be far now.
Her eyes sighted something in the distance. Mirages were common in this world of sand, but Grane had learned to trust her eyes. A hovel of assorted sheets of metal stood upon the horizon, as if it had just sprouted their like a cactus. As Grane approached she began to hear the rattling cacophony produced by the winds and sands striking against the poorly constructed metal hovel. It was enough to make the ear’s bleed and the eyes water. As she crept closer and closer the hovel shaped itself more vividly. Random pipes and rods jut out at every angle, like hands reaching out of a dungeon. Who else besides a witch would live in such an abode? This must be the right place. Grane stood just outside now, bracing herself against the noise. She thought to knock so as to not draw the witch’s ire, but their was no door, just a flap of tarp. Grane inhaled twice and then exhaled once, a method of focus she had found to calm her nerves. She then briskly pulled back the flap and ducked into the hovel.
“Hmm…” an ancient and feeble sounding voice hummed out, somehow clear as day in the roaring cacophony of noise. “What have we here?”
It took Grane a moment to find the source of the voice in the jungle of furs and blankets that decorated the inside of the odd hovel. The witch sat, presumably, in the far corner. There was no telling what she looked like, for a tangled mess of gray hair poured out in every direction, obscuring any features the witch may have had. It was a ghastly sight, and an even worse smell. Grane wondered if the witch’s body was already decaying.
“I must be getting old…” The witch groaned weakly. “What are you?”
“A HUNTER.” Grane replied, trying to seem calm while also yelling above the noise.
“No need to raise your voice, girl.”
“Uh…A hunter..” Grane repeated, this time softly.
“A hunter you say?” The witch punctuated with soft laugh. “If you say so, dear.”
“They say you’ve been alive since before the blight.” Grain stated.
“Do they now?” The witch replied. “And what does one such as you need from one such as that?”
Grane looked down at the floor. She had been searching for the witch for ages, but was still unprepared for such a question. Did she seek to end the blight? That may save countless others, but what did she care about those people? Those who called her blight-touched and forced her to wander the wastes. Those who had treated her as less than human for as long as she could remember. Perhaps then she simply wished to know what the blight was. It had touched her, and she had become intimately bonded to it. If she could learn why, or how, maybe knowledge would bring peace to her tired mind.
Grane wondered which answer was the truth, and she wondered more which answer sounded better to strange ears.
“I seek the blight.” She stated bluntly after a short deliberation. The witch stood silent for a moment, as if bemused by the words.
“Seek?”
“I seek to know it. To feel it. To end it.” Grane elaborated.
“My, my,” the witch cackled out. “Very ambitious for a lost little lamb.”
Grane scrunched her face in confusion for the slightest instant. What in the sands was a lamb? She considered asking, but ultimately decided on silence.
“All things have a home.” the witch suddenly stated.
“What?” Grane muttered in reply, unsure of where the witch was going with this.
“Even the blight has an origin.” The witch continued, “What better place to learn of something than the place it was born?”
“Where was the blight born?”
“I don’t know for certain,” the witch replied, “But to find it you must travel to the west that weeps.”
“The west that weeps.” Grane repeated with confusion. She had never heard of such a place. “Where is that?”
“My dear girl,” The witch giggled to herself before continuing. “It is to the west.”
Grane stared at the witch for a moment in silence, unsure of if this was her idea of a joke.
“…Thanks.” she eventually replied.
Figuring this was all she could get, Grane turned to take her leave.
“And girl.” The witch started causing Grane to look back. “The blight came from the west, the further you go the less shelter you will find.”
Grane nodded and continued outside. The witch was about as useful as one would expect an extremely elderly person to be. All she could do was follow wherever this lead, regardless of the veracity of the witch’s babblings.
“The west that weeps.” Grane mouthed silently. Enigmatic as it was, at least she still had a destination.
