Extreme heat, vast stretches of sand, and sparse vegetation.
This was the desert. Yet it was not the barren wasteland that it appeared at first glance. A good life could be had here, provided you were tough and adaptable enough.
For yes, the desert could give life, but far more easily take it.
And it was by taking lives that this desert dweller kept its own, for she was a predator. A predator of great patience, a predator that had waited in still silence for hours to get this chance.
Eyes were not needed, vibration alone was enough to track the hare's position as it settled under the shade of a bush to shelter from the blazing afternoon sun. The huntress had chosen her location well, she was within striking range.
The hare sensed the attack coming a moment too late as a muscular, segmented tail burst from the sand near it. The creature had only started its first bound to escape when the pointed tip of the huntress' stinger found its mark, jamming into the animal's body so hard it was thrown to the side several feet. The hare went instantly limp, its twitching nose, panicked eyes and rapid breaths the only signs it was still alive.
A moment later the rest of the creature emerged from the sand with explosive speed, her blade ending the hare's life with a single slash to its neck. The feminine pink eyes of the hunter never flinched, such hunts were routine for her.
But even as she began preparing the animal to be cooked, she sensed a new source of vibrations. She could tell it was very different from her prey animals, rather it could be a potential mate, traveling alone if she was reading the presence right. It could be a woman, in which case her hopes would be dashed, but all the same she could not afford to ignore this rare opportunity. She was so excited by the prospect, not that it showed on her stoic face, that she almost missed further vibrations that signaled a group of intruders, ones whose positions indicated they were pursuing her target. This she couldn't allow, especially if they were who she suspected they were. She had to hurry.
Quickly burying the hare for later, she retrieved the cloak she had stashed among nearby rocks earlier and set off in rapid pursuit.
------
Kenneth Peregrine knew he was being followed. A bounty hunter tended to develop sixth senses about these sorts of things. All the same, simply knowing in this case was not too helpful. He was in the middle of nowhere in a part of the vast desert that covered so much of this portion of the continent. The dunes he was traversing offered little in the way of hiding places, but perhaps if he could reach the rocky crags that surrounded them he could find shelter. Provided he didn't end up in an ambush. After all, his pursuers likely knew this area better than he did.
This wasn't how he wanted things to go. Normally it was he who stalked his targets, finding out everything he needed to know to take them down and then choosing the time and place to do so. The raven-haired man was in his mid twenties, in great physical shape, bearing a piercing gaze in his dark eyes and was fairly adept in several forms of martial arts, but even so he wasn't confident about his chances if he had to take on a number of well-armed desert bandits on their home turf.
This wasn't at all like the jobs he had done in the past. Capturing escaped prisoners, gang leaders and other criminals inside cities gave him many resources he now lacked. He'd never worked in a desert region before, and despite thinking he had prepared himself he now realized you could only learn so much from books.
He had come out here to scout for the bandit leader. He'd been commissioned to take him, dead or alive, by a wealthy client whose shipments had suffered a number of losses to this man in this general area. Kenneth had gone alone, reasoning it would be easier to sneak around the bandit's lair once he found it. This was a mistake as the sheer vastness of the desert meant it would be a miracle if he found the bandits before they found him, and being alone meant he was an easy target.
He had had confidence at first when he located a lair a few days ago, but subsequent investigating showed it to have not been used in some time. It seemed the bandits were nomadic to some degree, likely moving from one lair to the next rather than holing up in any one place for too long. Now that he thought more about it, it made sense given they were wanted by the law and setting things up so that a group of men could survive in one place in the desert for a long time would inevitably draw attention to them. Now it seemed he would suffer for his poor judgment, as if being low on water hadn't been bad enough. Despite being low on rations his pack of supplies had never felt heavier on his back.
"Should have never taken this job..." he sighed as he neared the veritable fortress of rocky land that seemed to emerge from the sea of sand. He pulled his cloak tighter as the wind billowed it, then removed the hood. It protected him from the still blazing early evening sun but he would need his vision unobscured for what was likely to come.
He immediately realized there were many places here he could potentially hide including what looked to be large caverns, but hiding anywhere depended on getting out of sight of his pursuers first, and that seemed impossible as by now he was pretty sure there were a number of them and they had surrounded him. Spotting some shadowy figures atop a nearby ridge confirmed it.
Kenneth gave a frustrated sigh. May as well get this over with, being unafraid in the face of death was something else bounty hunters tended to develop. He loosed the harness of the pack on his back and let it fall to the ground. He needed to be able to move as freely as possible.
"All right, I know you're there so you may as well come out. That will make this simpler for all of us."
The whistling sound of an arrow speeding through the air alerted him to an attack from the opposite side. As they had so many times in the past his reflexes saved him from a potentially fatal wound as he spun around and raised his right arm out from the confines of his cloak.
A moment later a clang echoed through the area and the arrow bounced harmlessly off the plated armor of one of the silver-colored gauntlets he wore. Despite being fairly light, flexible, and breathable in the heat it offered exceptional protection and was worth the distance he had to travel and all the money he had to pay to have them and the similarly-designed chainmail armor under his shirt made. The work of a cyclops didn't come cheap after all, especially if she wasn't interested in using mating with you as collateral.
"You see?" he stated in a mocking tone. "And this isn't the only trick I have, so unless you want to waste more arrows come out here and deal with me face to face."
