1: Introduction

Corosa strongly disliked the Morroc desert, for all the obvious reasons and more than that. He hated how alive it seemed, sandstorms swirling and crackling with electricity, dunes hopping away and drifting of their own accord, wind not only howling, but whistling and laughing and mocking and jeering at all and sundry. He hated the whole contradictory aspect of the place. Burn by day, freeze by night. A landscape that seemed as enormous as the oceans because there was never any end to it, yet also as closed in as a closet because one could never see the sky for all the sand. A place where life both thrived and died at the same time.

It was, he thought, almost a reflection of the entirety of Rune-Midgard in miniature. Rune-Midgard was not exactly his favorite place either, but unlike the Morroc desert, he had no choice in whether he wished to stay in Rune-Midgard or not. The only way out was death.

Corosa took a drink from his flask and reflected on how there was no place on this earth where he felt comfortable. In fact, come to think of it, if he was forced to stay in one place forever, he would have chosen the desert. At least there were no buildings here. Nor were there many people. And it was possible to survive, if you knew the right places.

Corosa was just putting his flask away when he saw a giant shadow lumber out of the curtains of sand.

He scrambled to his feet and dodged over to the other side of the boulder. Yet another reason why he strongly disliked the desert; the sand kept getting into his guns and he could barely shoot with enough accuracy to hit something right in his face, leaving his life to depend entirely upon his speed and the stupidity of the various beasts living around here.

But the monster, whatever it was, did not come towards him. It had not even noticed him. Instead it sniffed at the ground, then swept its head around and bounded off to the left. For a moment the sand cleared up enough for Corosa to make out the shape of a wolf.

He had seen the desert wolves here, but none of them were that large.

Corosa retreated slowly, walking backwards as to make sure that the wolf did not change its mind. It turned, once, giant head facing his way, but more as if to snort at him in amusement than to come after him.

It whipped its head back around in the direction it was going, head snapping out as hind legs coiled and leapt.

Over the whistling of the wind, Corosa heard a distinctly human scream.

The sound froze him in his tracks and he put a hand over his eyes as a shield against both sun and sand. But all he could see from here was the giant wolf, leaping and lunging in a demented dance, neck stretching and jaws snapping at something too tiny and too indistinct for Corosa to see. Hear, though. The howls the wolf made blended in too well with the howls of the wind. A human's scream was an entirely different matter.

Corosa yanked out both his guns. Perhaps they were more likely to fly off into the sand than into the wolf itself, but if worst came to worst he could try shoving one into the wolf's eye.

In other matters he was luckier. The winds were blowing towards his back. He did not have to fight against them as he struggled through the sands.

His foot slipped and he crashed into the ground, left leg swallowed up to the hip by soft sand and right leg quickly following. Swearing, Corosa flipped himself onto his back and fought his way out, spitting out dust and hacking as it dried him out, grain by grain.

There was another scream in the air when he fell again and clutched at the ground to find hard stone beneath his fingertips. One of the veins of rock worming their way through the desert. Corosa scrambled up onto it and drove onwards towards the wolf, now close by.

It caught his scent and spun.

Sunlight gleamed off something below it. Corosa only saw the glint for a split second before the metal it was reflecting off slammed down into the wolf's left paw.

"Shoot the damn thing, will you?" someone screamed at him as means of introduction.

Corosa jerked his hands up and pulled the triggers. Both bullets made it out, plunging into the wolf's fur between its eyes. It screeched and threw itself at Corosa before he could get himself out of the way.

His head slammed back into the stone road, and he felt his forearm rupturing, the sound of bone splintering loud and clear in his ears. A thunk followed afterwards but no pain came with it. He opened his eyes to see someone ripping an axe out of the wolf's left ear. Blood spouted out and soaked the man in a flood of red, and that was the last of him that Corosa saw before the monster smashed its paw into the mastersmith.

Corosa just barely managed to squirm slightly to the side, but he could raise his good hand, cock the hammer back, and pull the trigger, blasting another bullet into the wolf's shoulder. This time it ignored him. Too busy dealing with the mastersmith, who was back up again and had just swung his axe into its flank.

His fingers were shaking as he fired off another shot. Maybe it missed, but the wolf was so big that it was unlikely. Corosa did not bother to find out before he gave in to the temptation to curl up around his snapped arm.