Chapter Text
Rumbles in the Snow
Mavis pulled her furred scarf tight against the biting winds of the mountain slopes. Her armor, rather than adopting the aesthetics-first design approach of a number of hunters, was instead crafted with heavy wulg-fur lining to deal with the cold. The patterns on the fur camouflaged her body into a flitter of black and white sprinting through the snowy forest line. Her eyes were constantly in motion, cautious for threats but inevitably flitting back to small sparks of green guiding her steps. Scoutflies, the second truest ally of the Monster Hunter.
The insects flitted from point of interest to point of interest. Mushrooms; beetles; berry bushes; the green glow of the scoutflies lingered for the half-moment they could before falling into the wake of Mavis's cross-country sprint. The insects were bred to be deeply curious with a developed antennae structure to detect scents and to flee back to their home as soon as its signature scent fades away or was overwhelmed by the scent of a monster. This makes them invaluable assets for both tracking monsters and alerting the hunter carrying them. Mavis recited the information to herself, lectures drilled into her mind over her two years of training.
The scattered flies converged on one spot, excited green calling them into the deep impression of a wide-set footprint. At least four feet in length and three across with five toes, four front and one back. Mavis fumbled around in her item pouch and scattered a pinch of purple-pink dust over the flies. The flies flashed and spun in response to the treat. Connections in their brains, carefully crafted, tells them “If you found more of the scent, you would get more of the treat!” Everything else faded to the side for the bugs as they began rushing over the snow, nearly leaving the huntress behind before she shifted into a run. A normal person would balk at sprinting through snow for as long as Mavis did, but she is a Hunter. Through training, hearty meals, and constant effort, she was made for this sort of strain.
By the measure of toppled trees and earth scraped bare, she had made it to the territory of the Jade Barroth. Mavis vaulted over a collapsed tree and rolled to a stop, pressing her bare ear against the frosty earth the log had sheltered. Nothing. The steps of the Jade were heavy and plodding. If the brute was anywhere nearby she would have been able to hear it without issue. The scoutflies followed their trail up a collapsed cliff, and years of training took form as Mavis ran up the incline without breaking stride.
The scoutflies struggled to stay ahead of the huntress on their guiding path over the crumbled and uneven stones. Barroth are insectivores, and they prefer to kill their prey by ramming into them on the wall so they can’t fly away before they are eaten. Of course, this means their territories are filled with rubble from their, well, ‘indelicate’ hunting habits. A comforting voice ran through the hunter’s mind as her scoutflies flashed a brighter shade of green and dove into a gap between the cliffs.
Leaping off the cliffside and skidding to a stop with the help of a leftover snowdrift from three days ago, Mavis dropped low in order to survey the hollow. Crumbling stone stood out like pepper on the pure white snow. She was filled with a warm glow of pride. I found it, the disturbance I was ordered to investigate! The Jade Barroth on the outskirts of her village had gotten into some sort of fight two days ago, and snowfall had happened the day before that. She pulled out her pouch of Scoutfly Dust again and scattered it with a flourish. The gentle green glow intensified until galaxies of the little flies were flying- no, dancing over the snow.
Pinprick stars swam in searching formation before gathering in constellation clumps. Mavis approached the nearest one, cautious of her step in order to not ruin the remaining footprints in the snow. As she dug out her notebook to begin noting the scene down her mind wandered to when she got recruited in the first place
…
“I heard the Jade Lady roarin’ real loud, then I heard the sounds of a scuffle.” “A scuffle? Did you happen to catch sight of the aggressor?”
“Oh, I sure did! We just thought sending you out anyways would be funny.”
Mavis flushed at the remark. “ Right, sorry. You were saying?”
The scout waved off Mavis’s embarrassment “Seems to me that the Jade drove it off. But whatever’s reckless enough to walk right into a Barroth’s territory might be willing to walk into the village itself. Think you can go check it out for me?”
…
Shaking off still-lingering embarrassment, Mavis began to reconstruct the scene as best she could. The first step in a hunting investigation was to mark the footprints of the Jade Barroth as being present in order to confirm the verbal report. Mavis didn’t do that though. Instead she stared in surprise and confusion as a constellation of scoutflies shone blue light across the snow. “What?” The word slipped out of her lips at the same time her notebook slipped out of her hands. “...Blue?” Mavis sat there in wonder until she remembered how to breathe, at which point she snatched the notebook up and stumbled towards the blue scoutflies. The target of her graceless stumble through the snow was a pair of near-perfectly circular footprints measuring two palms across. Mavis didn’t know what it meant when scoutflies were blue, but what she did know was how to read a footprint. The creature that left the prints was lighter than most monsters. It was lighter than even some other humans Mavis knew. Although the weight might just be more spread out than a boot or a paw. It could be heavier than it appears. Scrawling down the information, she moved over to the next constellation to begin glowing blue.
In total, the tracks indicated a violent conflict between the Jade Barroth and the unidentified monster which she had started to refer to as ‘Lightweight’ in her notes. Gravel and snow drifts were displaced by the Barroth’s heavy crown as evident from the scraped-off shards of blue-green keratin found in them. The Barroth only sustained minor damages in her fight with Lightweight. Mavis could find scattered scales and a chunk of keratin as large as a fist but no blood stained the snow. Lightweight was no threat to the Jade Barroth, yet the creature engaged in a fight with her enough to deal minor damage.
Tapping her writing implement against her chin, Mavis ruminated on this thought. Monsters typically don’t stray out of their league when they engage in combat, running away if faced against a monster as mighty as the local Jade. What drove Lightweight to match up against it? She let out a little yelp of surprise as something stabbed into her hand from beneath the snow. Carefully extracting it, she found… something. Clearly a fragment of a greater whole, it was a deep purple and bore regular grooves in a repeating pattern that broke off before she could make sense of it. Like a little piece of obsidian, though the object was far too metallic to be that sort of volcanic glass. She tucked it into an empty pocket of her pouch and carried on the investigation.
Every new footprint and skid through the snow painted a picture that made less and less sense. Lightweight can’t have been any taller than eight feet and the spacing of the legs implied a bipedal physique. It was dragging something soft through the snow as it moved, leaving trails of disturbed snow that marked its movement. Fur around the legs, perhaps? The shards of purple metal were found scattered all over the hollow, the largest of which was wedged deeply into a sheer stone wall and wouldn’t come out no matter how hard Mavis pulled.
Her ears tensed, primal hunter instincts acting faster than her brain could process information. She dropped low to the ground and threw up her hood to allow the wulg-fur to take effect, breaking up her silhouette against the snow. Barking echoed throughout the stony walls of the Jade Barroth’s territory. Barking, rather than the guttural growls of the Wulg or the piercing howls of the Barioth. The hunter took a careful stance in the snow as the barking grew closer.
A pair of snow dogs bearing a wiry sled raced into view. Mavis rose to her feet in recognition of the sled’s rider. “Field Scout Luke? What are you doing here?” The field scout, a young man with uncut blonde hair, jolted as she spoke “Shit! Mavis, hey! There you are!” The field scout stepped off the sled and started walking towards her, destroying a set of footprints as he waved to her.
“How’s it going, rookie?” “You’re stepping on- wait. Rookie? I’ll have you know we both started working at the same time!” He gave a taunting smile. “Yeah, but I learned faster.” She huffed, trying to hide her laughter. T
hey both knew the rivalry was an extended joke, but the first one to laugh lost. Mavis was determined to win. “Anyways, Rookie. I’m here to pick you up from your ‘special assignment,’ your master’s back from his hunt.”
“HE IS!?” The snow dogs looked up from their rest with concern at Mavis’s sudden shout. “Is he alright? I mean, of course he is. Right?” “Easy, easy!” he made a placating gesture at her “The Hunter is fine, alright? Now hop onto the sled or you’ll miss the celebration out here. Hunting a Rathian alone is no joke, the whole town’s in on this.” “Right!” She snapped up the last metal shard she could find into her pouch and clambered onto the back of the sled.
…
The gentle snowfall passed by as a blurry implication of white while the sled made its way back up the icy slopes of the Hedging Mountains. The sled dogs were bred for heavy loads and distance running. Working together the pair of dogs pulled the cart-sled at speeds the fastest of monsters would struggle to match. Mavis held tight around the waist of the field scout. Technically a cart is supposed to only carry one person at a time. Unfortunately, both for the guild and for Mavis who was squeezing her arms around the field scout as tight as she could while the cart trundled at dizzying speeds, nobody listened to that recommendation. Luke shouted something incomprehensible back at her. Mavis didn’t hear what he said, but she didn’t need to. She understood as the cart turned one last corner. All of Hapu Coco was in motion. Adult villagers were distracting little kids with stories and paper lanterns so they wouldn’t get in the way of the heavy cargo sleds being unloaded by both a team of scouts and various teenagers under the direction of the grizzled old Forgemaster. Steam hissed from the large piping structure laid through the whole town, sending warmth into every heart despite the bitter cold of the mountainside. She was home.
Mavis performed a rolling tumble off of the cart. Field Scout Luke yelped and gave a signal for the dogs to stop but Mavis was already running up the wooden walkways of the village. People called out to her, in greeting or alarm, but her focus was single-minded. She ducked under some monster bones wrapped up in a tarp and leapt onto a steam pipe to avoid a crowd. The village was built like a gear, with spokes sticking out from the steam engine heart. Mavis didn’t have the patience to take the walkways, so she ran over the steamworks in between the buildings.
She pulled herself on top of a building and scanned the village center. Everyone in town was out and about, voices and cheerful yells filling the square. It would be hard to- There he is! That scraggly salt and pepper beard that he always refused to shave, “I look far more dignified with it, don’t you think?”; The medical bands wrapped tightly around his arms, He would throw himself off a cliff before he dared disobeying the Meowdic’s instructions, that felyne is scary; and that stupid smile permanently plastered across his face. Magnus, the Master Hunter of Hapu Coco.
“Master!” Mavis called out as she leapt off of the building, correcting a near-fall by sliding down a descending pipe. She slammed into the veteran hunter with force that buckled the wooden walkway beneath them.The master hunter gave a tight hug in response, hardly moved an inch from her near-dive into his chest. Magnus was the smartest, dumbest, and bravest man Mavis had ever known. He taught her everything she knew both in terms of hunting and otherwise. “You’re alright! Did you take down the Rathian?”
“I'm afraid not." he said with a teasing smile. “I died and got eaten, now I’m a ghoul!” He hugged her back and made exaggerated gnashing and eating noises “I feast on your flesh, dearest apprentice!”
Mavis laughed as he growled and mimed biting into her flesh “Quit it, old man! People are looking!”
“They’ve seen me do weirder, it gives me my devilish charm~.” Magnus set her down gently, patting her on the head as she got back on her feet. “How was your first solo mission, kid?”
“It went great! No problems at all.”
Mavis buckled at her Master’s hearty slap on her shoulder “That’s my apprentice! I knew you could do it.”
“I do have just one question, though. My scoutflies did something weird during my mission.” She quickly followed after him as he made his way towards the main hall.
“Don’t worry, I can tell you everything you need to know during the feast! Apparently I’m some kind of ‘big deal’ around here for some reason. Maybe it was because of my excellent comedy skills? Or perhaps to celebrate my new career as a playwright! Either way, come on and get some food in there. You’ll need it after your hard work today!”
“I’m not the one to fight a Rathian, Master… BeatyouthereGO!” Mavis took off sprinting before she had even finished her sentence. Her Master had pulled that trick on her dozens of times before so now she was giving him a taste of his own…
Mavis’s footsteps stopped as instead of hearing a second pair rattling across the walkways she heard a ‘Thud.’ She turned back to see him lying prone, facefirst against the ground.
Her heart stopped for a moment, but Mavis had seen her master take worse hits! He could get up again, good as new!
He didn’t.
Somebody screamed.
…
Mavis held her head between her knees, gasping for air as she waited outside her master’s bedroom door. Her legs were bolstered by protective nerves as she helped the Meowdic carry his limp body to his bed, but as soon as her burden was relieved she found herself unable to stand. Mavis didn’t have nightmares often, but as a set of monstrous claws squeezed her stomach in a painful grip she felt like she was living in one.
She jolted in place at the gentle ‘click’ of the doorknob. The Meowdic, an elderly felyne with features worn down by battle and time, stepped gently through the door and closed it behind her. She turned to Mavis, taking in her disheveled state and reddened eyes, and spoke. “He’s a reckless idiot bastard, but he’s going to make it.” The Meowdic’s words were sharp but they held no heat. “What about you, Mavis? You yowled really hard back there.” “I- I’ll be… fine- How long is he going to be down? Will he miss his celebration?”
The felyne shook her head. “By a league. Your meowster’s blood is fifty purr-cent Rathian venom. He won’t be leaving his bed for a week at least.” She paused, “That was a joke, by the way. His blood is fine, meowstly.”
Mavis distantly knew the effects of Rath venom from her studies. Often fatal, but- “Master was walking and talking earlier! He’s going to be okay, he’s gotta! He’s- He’s gotta.”
“Kid!”
Mavis snapped back to attention, shaky breaths slowly clearing her head.
“Don’t space out on me Mavis, you had me worried. Look, sitting here and rotting isn’t going to help you or Magnus. Go get something to eat then go do something. You’re at your worst when you let these feelings meowrenate.”
“Meowrenate? I’m sorry, I don’t know that one.” “The word is ‘Marinate.’ It means to let something sit.” She gave Mavis a gentle rap on the head with a wooden spoon to get her on her feet and moving. “I’ll let you know when he’s feeling better, Mavis. You know I wouldn’t keep you in the dark about that.”
“That- That wasn’t what I was going to say!”
“Yes it was.”
And that was that.
…
Headwoman Cheret was far more active than her mayoral role demanded. When she wasn’t taking and organizing reports she was helping the Forgemaster repair the town’s pipe systems. When she wasn’t doing that she was forcing herself into the odd jobs, daily chores, or assigned duties of Hapu Coco’s villagers. Mavis pushed herself through the forge’s heavy duties to find herself doing the first, listening closely to the Forgemaster’s serious tone.
“Y’sure you wrote the delivery down?”
“Sure as stone, ma’am. You know I ain’t dull about these things. It was here a’ ten an’ now it ain’t.”
The Headwoman crossed her arms and looked to the ceiling as if she expected the missing delivery to descend in a ray of holy light. Instead of a crate, she spotted a young woman in a scarf pushing her way into the room. “Rookie, you’re just in time. The Forgemaster could use your help.”
…
The Forgemaster shoved open the reinforced steel door into the storage shed. The dusty floor was laden down with shelves which were laden down with crates which were laden down with monster parts. Those heavy wooden crates were built with a particular interior lining derived from the Remobra, a creature with minor resistances to all common elemental affinities that thrived in the icy cold around Hapu Coco. The Remobra leather lining of the boxes prevented the organic cargo from spoiling or damaging their surroundings. Mavis felt a glimmer of pride, she had hunted those very Remobra herself along with her Master. The most prominent new addition to the shed was the giant hole in the wall.
“Oh, shit.” Mavis stepped forwards towards the wall but was yanked back by the Forgemaster grabbing her scarf.
“Watch your step. ‘Ere are still prints on the ground.”
“Do you know what happened here?”
The forgemaster shook his head. “Not in full, but clearly sum’in got in here and started rustlin’ wit’ the crates. Broke down the wall an’ everything to get a’ em” Mavis tapped her belt to release the scoutflies as she listened carefully. “When I was op’ning the door a few hours ago I heard a crash. It took me ages to yank the blasted thing open an’ when I did, the critter was far gone.”
The Headwoman chimed in from the main forge building. “I suppose this marks your second quest alone, Rookie. I want you to track down the critter which broke into the storeroom. Bring the materials it stole back as well as the monster itself.”
Mavis nodded with vigor. “I won’t let you down, ma’am!”
“No, Mavis.” Headwoman Cheret shook her head with a warm smile, “You won’t.”
“Well, lass.” The forgemaster turned to the scoutfly constellations congregating on the ground. “Get to it.”
Mavis saluted, “Yes sir!”
“Can you let go of my scarf now?”
…
The scoutflies were easily distracted in the storage shed. Trained to search for monsters, the abundance of monster parts in the crates left them rushing to inspect every seam in the hopes of finding the source. Mavis righted an empty crate and started putting discarded parts inside. Several crates were broken into and their contents scattered across the ground, though fortunately the destruction was limited to the row of shelves immediately past the hole in the wall.
She shook off a thick curtain of green scoutflies as she placed part after part into the box to be sorted later. The preserved ear of a Lagombi, the sleep sac of a Great Baggi, part after part swept into the box. She jolted straight from the mindless task as she saw a very familiar shade of glowing blue beneath a sturdy green scale. She carefully displaced the scale and… there it was: A circular footprint, two palms across, illuminated with blue scoutflies.
“Oh. You’re a troublemaker.” Mavis ran her finger over the rim of the print with a growing grudge. The materials displaced were from a variety of monsters, but the crate that suffered the most destruction was the newest addition to the shed. Rathian parts. Her Master’s rathian parts. Lightweight stole the rathian parts that her master nearly died getting.
Mavis reached into her pouch for a pinch of scoutfly powder, then went back in to grab a handful. She slammed the powder into the circular print with cold anger building in her heart. Every trace of green vanished from the room as the scoutflies swarmed the pile of powder and the footprint therein. The room was ablaze in a galaxy of blue light which ate at the shadows cast by the setting sun. The scoutflies caught the trail and bolted out of the broken wall.
The huntress followed.