WhiteFangofWhoa: Thanks for another review! Yes-the misspelling of 'chocobo' as 'cochobo' is intentional. If I manage to keep this going (I'm up to 75,000 words so far in my first draft, which can all be read as I write it on the site mentioned on my profile!) I intend to put it up elsewhere and on Kindle too, as though heavily influenced by FF it is still its own thing. If I do that, I probably can't use 'chocobo'! So 'cochobo' serves as a placeholder for now! (Interestingly, I've just started reading a novel called 'Seven Blades in Black' by Sam Sykes which completely rips off chocobos, though obviously he doesn't call them that either). Thanks so much again for your continual readership and reviewing.

Author's Note: According to my Traffic Stats page I've started picking up a few more readers lately. Exciting! It seems that if people make it through the Prologue they often stick with it and keep going, and for some reason the chapter 'Seeking Shelter' is very popular. If you are reading along, please leave a review and let me knew! Like any writer, I thrive on feedback.

While the healer Cid circled around to re-enter Nonts from the north, Ryn, Nuthea, Sagar and Elrann kept to the woods and continued south-east past the town, walking to the hill where they had agreed to meet later.

Ryn walked leading the cochobo by the reins, the captive bounty hunter propped up in its saddle. The black-shrouded man didn't make any sound except the occasional "Ahhhh." He seemed still to be lost in his 'poppy trance', although from time to time his body twitched a little, making the cochobo beneath him caw. Ryn carried the man's sword in its black sheath, making it his own for the time being, seeing as he had returned Sagar's and had no other weapon.

As they walked, the travelers kept looking round over their shoulders, thinking every stray breeze on the back of their necks was an Imperial batallion come to find them. But no Imperials came. All they saw was the trunks of the trees that they had just walked past. All they heard was the sound of the leaves rustling above them, the squerch of their footsteps on the forest floor, and the sighing and cawing of the bounty hunter and his steed.

A single green leaf floated down from a branch, swaying through the air, and came to rest a few paces in front of Ryn. He remembered that it must nearly be the end of Summer; that Autumn was on the way.

Eventually they made it to the wooded hill beyond Nonts that Cid had spoken of and climbed the ascent to its crest. By now Ryn's shins and calves ached awfully. He and his body had been through a lot in the last day. Not to mention the last week… Mother, father, hometown. Find Vorr. Kill Vorr.

At the top of the hill trees obscured the view, so they couldn't see into the distance unless they stood at its lip. When they did so all they could see was the treetops of the wood for miles around, except for where Nonts lay nestled in the north-west. It was safer to stay hidden under the tree cover though, so they quickly decided to walk back underneath it.

Ryn tied up the cochobo to a branch and they all sat with their backs against the trees. Ryn settled with his back in the smooth crook of a tall, mighty oak, relishing the chance to give his legs some rest as he lent against its reassuring bulk.

Everyone seemed too exhausted to talk. So they just sat like that for a while, waiting for their new companion Cid to return. Ryn watched the leaves dancing as the branches swayed gently in the breeze.

Can we really trust this man? he thought of the old healer. He wondered if in the end he had voted the best way in the group decision. After all, one elderly resident of Nonts had betrayed him already. But this man seemed different.

He looked around at the other members of his traveling party. Nuthea was hugging her knees in her torn dress and watching the leaves as well, apparently lost in thought. Sagar had his legs and arms crossed and his head bowed, eyes closed. Elrann fiddled with one of her pistols, tipping some powder from a bottle into a hole she had opened in the top of it.

Come to think of it, can I really trust any of these people? I don't even want the same thing as them. I'm just staying with them for safety until I can find General Vorr and kill him, because I think he might be headed the same way as them. Although…

His gazed settled on Nuthea again, but when she raised her eyes to him Ryn quickly looked away at the bounty hunter. The bounty hunter, still sat astride the cochobo, had gone quiet and stopped making his sighing noises. Why had Ryn argued they keep him alive, again?

Ryn remembered the look of glinting desperation he had seen in the man's grey eyes when he had been about to die.

Because he's been through some sort of horrible nightmare just like I have, that's why. And anyway, it hadn't turned out to be so bad a choice so far, had it? The bounty hunter had given them directions to Nonts. If Sagar had killed him, they wouldn't have known which way to go. And he might be able to give them more information about what was going on with this Imperial invasion when he woke up. If he ever woke up...Hang on, is he snoring? When did he fall asleep?

Mother, father, hometown. Find Vorr. Kill Vorr. If Ryn stayed still in one place too long images of his parents dying and his hometown burning would crowd into his mind again. He got to his feet and walked over to the cochobo.

The cochobo inclined its head to inspect Ryn with its beady eyes, then nuzzled him with its beak when Ryn stroked its head feathers. "Hey, well done," Ryn whispered. "You did good today. I might need you to run fast like that again sometime-so catch a good break while you can."

Somewhere, a twig snapped.

Ryn's head shot round. "What was that?" Nuthea and Elrann looked up too. All was quiet for a hearbeat.

"It was nothing," said Sagar, without lifting his head or opening his eyes. "Just a branch falling in the wind or something. Go back to your rest, pup. And sit down. If you must insist on keeping that scumsucker alive, let him sleep off his poppy hit in peace so we can all have a break from him."

Ryn's jaw tightened at Sagar's casual commands. This pirate was really beginning to piss him off. "I want to find out what he knows about the invasion," he said. He also wanted to further vindicate himself for having kept the man alive, but he wasn't about to say that out loud.

Sagar sighed audibly from where he reclined against his tree, but he didn't say anything more.

"Hey, wake up," Ryn said to the bounty hunter. He prodded him in his black-clad leg where he sat bound astride the cochobo. The man didn't even stir. "Wake up," Ryn said again a bit more loudly, and shook the man gently.

Nothing.

"If he's sleeping off a poppy trance he'll be pretty hard to rouse," said Elrann helpfully as she polished her pistol with a cloth. "That's if you can rouse him at all."

"Just give it a rest, pup," said Sagar.

Ryn gritted his teeth. "Wake up!" he yelled, and slapped the bounty hunter in the face.

"Huh?! Whrrrrrrrr…" The man opened his eyes. They were deeply bloodshot, more red than right. But he was awake now. "Where…...where am I?" he rasped. Ryn noticed again how his accent was neither Efstanish nor Imfisi, but something else entirely-a strange combination of guttural and lilting.

"Rrrr...now you've done it…" muttered Sagar.

"You're in a forest outside Nonts, in Imfis," Ryn said to the man.

The man's brow knotted and some some grey reasserted itself in his eyes amidst the red. The black discoloration around his mouth was really quite horrible. "I am...? Oh...you're one of the boys who was with the target." One of the boys. That meant the bounty hunter classed Sagar as a 'boy' as well. Either that or maybe he mistook Elrann for a boy. "Why didn't you kill me when I failed the job?"

"Yes, why indeed..." said Sagar from off to the side.

Even this bounty hunter himself is questioning my decision to keep him alive! But Ryn set his jaw. He was determined to justify his actions and make some sense of his spur-of-the-moment choice to spare this man's life.

"I didn't kill you," Ryn said, "because you're going to tell us what the Empire is doing invading Imfis."

The man's forehead furrowed even more deeply as he looked at Ryn. He did nothing for a moment. Then his body twitched and his arms tensed against his bonds. He let out a small grunt.

"You're not going anywhere," said Ryn, a littlle surprised at his own boldness. "You're tied up good and tight."

"Why should I tell you anything?" the man said, his foreign-accented voice dripping with spite.

A clicking noise sounded. Ryn turned to see Elrann standing next to them. She had cocked her pistol and had it pointed at the bounty hunter's chest. "Because this time I will shoot to kill," she said. "I've re-loaded. Now tell farmboy here what he wants to know."

Does everyone have to have a derisive nickname for me?

The man curled his black-tainted lip, looking contemptuously between the pistol and Ryn. He didn't seem afraid of the weapon or the prospect of imminent death. "Do you have any more poppy?" he said.

"You just had a hit," Elrann growled. "You shouldn't need another one for a while."

The man did seem a lot more together and focused to Ryn, even if he was being entirely ungrateful and uncooperative.

The man smiled, but not in a happy way, and the blackness around his mouth rearranged itself. "It's never too early for another hit. Besides, it's nice to know where your next one is going to be coming from. If I knew that, I might be inclined to be a little more talkative…"

"You'll be talkative because if you don't I'll put a shot in you," said Elrann.

"Stop talking, woman, and just shoot him already!" said Sagar.

"Please," called Nuthea from where she sat. "No more violence! The One does not approve of senseless killing."

That lent Ryn a little more authority. "Cool it, Elrann," he said gently, reflecting as he did so that he seemed to be the only one of them who called anyone by their proper name. "He can't tell us anything if he's dead…" Mother, father, hometown. Find Vorr. Kill Vorr. Stay with Nuthea.

"Where's the old man?" said the bounty hunter, taking advantage of Ryn's being interrupted by his own thoughts to break the momentary silence. "The one who gave me the poppy before."

"He's doing something for us," Ryn said. He decided to use a bargaining tactic that Sagar had used before. "But he'll be back soon. We're just waiting for him. If you talk to us, I'll get him to give you some more poppy seed when he gets back."

The man went quiet for a moment and seemed to be considering his options. He must know he didn't really have very many. He was tied up and completely at their mercy.

"Alright," the man said at last. "I will talk now, for poppy later. What do you wish to know?"

"Well…" Ryn wondered where he should start. "Well, to begin with, what's your name?"

"My name?" The man looked puzzled again. "Why would you want to know my name?"

"You don't need to know his name, pup, that's a stupid question."

Ryn's fingers twitched. But then he remembered the feel of the cold point of Sagar's blade pirate into his neck. He remembered the pirate had elemental powers too. He remembered that he wasn't the leader of this group. Yet.

"Vish," said the bounty hunter.

"Huh?"

"My name. It's Vish."

"Oh. Good... And...who hired you to capture Nuthea?"

The man's grey eyes darted briefly beyond Ryn and back. "Nufea? Nufea is the girl with the yellow hair?"

"That's right. Nuthea."

"The Empire, of course."

"You work for them?"

"Yes."

"So you're not a bounty hunter?" said Elrann.

"I am, or, you might say, was, a bounty hunter on a permanent contract with the Morekemian Empire."

"You kill for them and they supply you with poppy," said Elrann.

Vish's silence might as well have been a 'yes'.

"But you're not Morekemian," said Elrann.

"You are right. I am from Aibar. I trained to kill in Aibar."

"How did you get involved with the Empire, then?" asked Ryn.

"They found me. They gave me poppy. Now I work for them. I hate them, but I work for them. The bigger the bounties I collect, the more poppy they give me."

"Why?" asked Ryn, confused at that second-last sentence. "If you hate them, why don't you just leave?" Hating the Empire was something he shared with this man, at least.

Vish dropped his voice. "You have never tasted poppy seed, have you, boy? It is the greatest feeling you could ever imagine. Greater. There is nothing better than it. Nothing. I have tried to leave, but I cannot. I need the poppy. It makes me happy. I am a slave to it. So I am a slave to the Empire too, since they give me poppy in return for killing."

Ryn pondered that. He understood a little more of this man's situation now. How Ryn hated the Empire. All they did was steal, kill, destroy. Enslave. Mother. Father. Hometown. Find Vorr. Kill Vorr.

"We will help you escape from your poppy enslavement," said Ryn, surprising himself as much as anyone.

"We will?" said Elrann.

"Urgggh…" groaned Sagar irritatedly. "Will you all just shut up?"

"That is a noble idea, Ryn," said Nuthea. She was standing next to him and Elrann now. She smiled.

Vish just sucked in his black lips and said nothing, and this time it wasn't clear what his nothing meant.

"So…" Ryn said, "if you work for the Empire, you know what they're up to. Why did you invade Imfis?"

"Yeah, what gives?!" said Elrann all of a sudden. "We pay our levies! There hasn't been any Imfisi trouble with the Empire for a long time, 'cept for the odd little pirate raid."

"I wouldn't call them little..." said Sagar from off in the distance.

"Still, nothing that should have led to a full scale invasion! What the hell is going on here?" Elrann was clearly still rattled by what had happened-as they all were-but as a resident of Imfis she seemed to be feeling it most.

Vish shook his head from where he sat atop the cochobo. "I know as much as you do, boy-"

"I'm a girl," said Elrann. "A woman, actually."

Vish frowned. "But you have short hair and you dress like a boy. And you carry a pistol."

"Yeah. What of it?"

Vish raised his eyebrows, but then blinked his puzzlement away. "Alright, girl, then. But still-I know as much as you, girl. I just collect my bounties. They don't tell me why or where I'm going. I was flown by airship to Imfis, dropped into the forest and told to hunt for a woman matching her description." His eyes flicked to Nuthea. "They must have been very keen to get their hands on her, as hey hadn't given me any poppy for a long time."

"Why does that affect anything?" said Ryn.

"Because the more desperate he is for poppy the harder he will hunt, dingbat," said Elrann.

"Oh."

"How did you find me?" said Nuthea. "If they knew where I was, why didn't they send more soldiers to capture me? Why did they just send you?"

Vish went quiet. He licked his blackened lips. "You will give me lots of poppy when the old man returns?"

"We'll get him to give you some, yes…" said Ryn carefully. "And then we'll start helping you to get free from it."

Vish swallowed. He was quiet a moment longer, but then he said "There are others like me. Not all from Aibar-though some are. Other Shadowfingers."

"'Shadowfingers'?" said Sagar. Now he stood up and joined them all as well. "What in the shit is a 'Shadowfinger'?"

Vish bit his lip. "I want lots of poppy," he said.

"Yeah, yeah," said Sagar, taking over the bartering from Ryn. "When the old timer gets back, sure."

"The Shadowfingers are the Empire's elite assassins," said Vish. "People call us bounty hunters because that is what they think we are. And that is true, in a way. But really we are all poppy slaves-and slaves to the Empire because of that. The Emperor finds the most dangerous killers in Mid, gets us hooked on poppy, and then uses us to carry out his wishes. Together, we make up the Emperor's Hand. It wasn't just me they dropped into Imfis, but other Shadowfingers as well. Maybe about five of us." He looked at Nuthea. "They must have known the general area you were in, but not exactly where. I stole this cochobo for transportation and just happened to chance upon you in the forest. I was lucky, I suppose. Or not, as the case may be," he added, eyeing Elrann's pistol. "I was doing fine until you shot me with that infernal contraption. Where did you acquire such a device, anyway?"

"In Farr," said Elrann, and grinned.

"Ah yes. Some of the Farric Shadowfingers have them as well." Vish nodded knowingly.

A distant noise like a dog barking, only deeper and angrier, came from somewhere very far away. Everyone looked round in the direction it had come from, the direction from which they had walked, but there was nothing to be seen, only the interwoven eaves of the trees.

"What was that?" said Ryn.

"Nothing," said Sagar. "A stray dog or something. So you're one of these 'Shadowfingers' then," he said, turning back to Vish to resume their interrogation. "One of the Morekemian Emperor's assassins. If that's true, you must know why he has invaded Imfis."

"You don't need to ask him," piped up Nuthea. "We already know why the Emperor has invaded Imfis."

"Well why don't you ask him if he knows what you think you know about why they've invaded?"

"I…" Nuthea hesitated. "I'm not sure we should talk to him about that. I'm not sure that we can trust him."

"Look, bounty hunter," said Sagar, "the princess here thinks that the Emperor has invaded Imfis because he's found out about some sort of ancient relics called the 'Primeval Jewels' and he's trying to get his hands on them."

"I have no idea what you are talking about," Vish said at once. He looked completely blank. "I've never heard of any 'Primeval Jewels' before."

"He's lying," said Elrann.

"Think what you will," said Vish. "I have no reason to lie to any of you. I haven't the faintest idea why the Empire has invaded this pitiful country. They don't tell me what they're doing-they just drop me into places and point me in the direction of my target so I can claim my poppy. I just want my poppy. In fact, it's in my interests to tell you the truth."

"Do you know who General Vorr is?" Ryn jumped in all of a sudden.

Vish was silent a moment. "Yes," he said.

Ryn's pulse quickened. "What can you tell me about him?"

"You don't want anything to do with him," Vish said slowly. "He is a brutal, cruel, highly dangerous Imperial officer. He has been tasked with leading the invasion of Imfis by the Emperor; I know that much."

"How do you know that much if they don't tell you anything?"

"Vorr is running the whole operation. He personally gave me my orders to hunt and capture or kill your yellow-haired girl himself."

"Nuthea."

"Nufea."

"What's he planning next?"

Vish sighed; not a sigh of pleasure this time like when he had been in the poppy trance, but a deeper, coarser sigh of exasperation. "That I cannot tell you. He merely tasked me with my target. I was to find or kill her, then report back with evidence-"

"Evidence?" interrupted Sagar.

"You know. Evidence that I'd completed the job. The severed head of the target will usually do."

Nuthea put a hand over her mouth.

"I was to report back with evidence," continued Vish, "receive my poppy, and then await my next target. I don't know anything about why I am given my targets, why the Empire are doing what they're doing, or what they're going to do next. I find it's best not to think about any of those things. All I'm interested in is my poppy."

Ryn's pulse slowed again, and he sighed as well. Whatever the others thought, he judged that this man was probably telling the truth, and that he really didn't know anything more about Vorr's plans or whereabouts. It made sense. He was just a slave who followed orders. Although...maybe if Ryn pressed him further the man might be able to give him some hint as to Vorr's plans and where Ryn might be able to find him next, and perhaps even how Ryn might most easily be able to kill him...

A question formed on his lips. "What else can you tell me about Gen-"

"Quick!"

Their heads snapped round. Someone had called out from somewhere in the forest, just on the edge of hearing.

There was another sound like the deep bark they had heard earlier, only louder and closer this time. There it was again. And again.

Rustling. Something moving through the undergrowth.

And then Cid appeared, a way off still, hurtling through the trees towards them at full gallop on the back of a yellow chocobo. Where he clasped the reins he also held ropes attached to another chocobo that galloped along behind him.

"Quick, get on, get on!" he yelled as he approached them. His face was puffy and red and he spoke between gasping for breath. "We've got to go, now! They're coming! They caught me stealing the cochobos from the stable now they're coming!"

"Who's coming?" Ryn was the first to say as he scrambled around in a panic, trying to work out which chocobo to mount.

The barking noise sounded again, closer still; horribly, bone-chillingly close.

"The Imperials, of course!" yelled Cid urgently. "But they're bringing something with them! Some kind of beast!"

From between the trees behind him, where Cid had been only moments ago, several black-armoured Imperial sodliers mounted on cochobos appeared.

And with them, twice their height and more than four times their width, was some sort of bone-white, dog-like, black-eyed, many-toothed, barking monster.