There Was Life Here Once

The hunter approached the valley of death.

There was no sound but H'aanit's own footsteps and the whistling of the wind through the pines. She heard the old trees creak gently as their branches swayed. Looking away from them, she stared out upon the ruins in front of her, one hand reaching down to stroke the fur of her loyal pet, Linde the snow leopard. Nodding to her companion, H'aanit stepped forward and entered what was once a village.

They had been here before, but it still hurt every time.

H'aanit walked slowly and deliberately among the rubble, Linde following along behind, her footsteps silent compared to her human owner. Some buildings were almost completely demolished, while others were partially standing. One lucky cottage was almost fully intact, though H'aanit had noticed the paint wearing down over time, more unsightly marks appearing every time she returned. She gently placed a hand against the cottage's wall. If no one maintained it, this little house would eventually fall into disrepair. And there was no one left in the former village to do so.

She may not have known exactly how it transpired, but H'aanit knew what happened here. This tiny village, so small it wasn't even shown on most maps of Glasetera, was the victim of a monster attack. Something had come here and had leveled the place. For what reason, it wasn't known. H'aanit had never lived here, never visited, never had any connection at all to this town when it was alive. She hadn't discovered it until it was too late, stumbling upon it while wandering the snowier half of Glasetera on an unrelated tracking expedition. Leaving her hand on the side of the cottage, H'aanit looked over the ruins of the village once again. It may have been too late for these poor people, but if she could figure out what monster had done this and track it down, she could avenge them - and, probably more importantly, prevent other towns from falling to a similar fate.

"What could it have been..." she said aloud. "What beast caused this?"

No answers would be found for that question. Not today. But H'aanit would not leave empty-handed.

As she observed the silent wreckage from her spot by the one intact cottage, her eye was drawn to Linde. The snow leopard was sniffing a brown triangle sticking stiffly out of a pile of rubble. H'aanit approached, taking a look for herself. The triangle was wood. She had seen this pile of ruin before, but had never paid it further notice. Glancing at Linde, she wondered if the cat was onto something. There was only one way to find out. She grabbed the wooden object and pulled, but it was embedded in the other stuff making up the pile, so she had to slowly clear away debris until it would budge. Finally she was able to free the wooden piece, revealing that it was a rectangle, not a triangle, when viewed in full. H'aanit turned it over in her hands, suddenly realizing that it was a sign. And upon the sign, only one word was written:

'Grenivak'.

"Was that this town's name?"

Perhaps.

Slowly, H'aanit turned her gaze upward. Looming high in the distance stood one of the tallest and most treacherous peaks in all of Glasetera: Krakenspine Mountain. It was a desolate place, with minimal wildlife and unforgiving slopes not fit for skiing, hiking, or much of anything else. Even daredevils were not often tempted by the challenge of Krakenspine. Few had attempted to climb it. Fewer had survived their attempt. And those who never came back, their bodies remained lost to the world. To go onto Krakenspine to reclaim them was likely to simply add to the count. Who knew how many poor lost souls decorated that mountain's crevices?

But H'aanit had been building on a hunch. She suspected that whatever had attacked Grenivak had come from Krakenspine. She could see it in her mind's eye. A horrible beast - for to be able to live on Krakenspine, it had to be quite horrible indeed - slithering out of a mountain cave, looking down upon the little village and beginning to steadily, inevitably creep towards it. It must have been an ambush. If not, the people would have seen it coming and had time to run. But if anyone had fled the attack, no one in Whalestrand had heard of them. H'aanit wanted to believe that at least some of the villagers had gotten to safety, to some other tiny town that wasn't too far away... but it was miles to the next outpost of civilization from here, and H'aanit knew in her heart that surely anyone who'd gotten away from the monster had instead been claimed by Glasetera itself, whose northern half was a merciless mistress to the unprepared and vulnerable.

As H'aanit stared at the distant visage of Krakenspine, she could not shake the feeling that she was being watched. Quietly, she looked to Linde and saw that the snow leopard was tensed up and staring intently at the mountain, teeth bared and ears flattened against her head. H'aanit wished she had been wrong, but clearly she wasn't imagining things, then. She looked at the mountain again, hairs standing up on the back of her neck, hands gripping her bow for a battle that didn't commence against a foe who wasn't there.

"I know you are out there." H'aanit hissed quietly.

The hunt would begin sooner or later. This she knew. She would find Grenivak's killer.

And she would make it pay in full.