Chapter 318: Plague territory is toast.

Dravin’s laughter died when he noticed that Hunter was not laughing. His face soured into a terrifying scowl. "You are actually serious. Are you fucking kidding me? Reformed cannibals my ass!" He barked, pointing a finger right at Hunter’s chest. "Are you out of your mind?! If they’re so damn ’reformed,’ why don’t you keep them? Why bring them to me? Do I look like I wish to be gnawed on? Brother, I did not survive the jaws of deadly beasts and bellies of saw worms to end up being eaten by a two-legged mammal that looks just like me."

Hunter let out a long, heavy sigh. He could feel the ’no’ coming like a freight train. "Dravin, it’s complicated. I can’t keep an eye on them all the time because I am always on the road. I...."

"No! No way in hell!" Dravin threw his hands up in the air. "Do you know where we live, Hunter? Look around! It’s an oasis surrounded by a desert full of giant, flesh-eating saw worms and giant beaked birds! Food is hard to come by! If those ’reformed’ freaks get a little hungry one night and decide they miss human meat, my people will be the winners of that lottery. We’d be trapped inside a fenced kitchen for your hungry little friends!" He shook his head, "My answer is NO. Absolute, 100% NO."

Hunter pinched the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes briefly. He nodded slowly. "Fair enough. Can’t blame a guy for trying."

Hunter reached out to swipe the supplies off the table and shove them back into his beast pocket.

Dravin’s hand shot out, slapping down firmly over the lock gun and dragging it toward himself.

Hunter blinked. "Dravin, you just said no."

"I said no to the man-eaters!" Dravin snapped, pulling the weapon closer to his chest like a dragon hoarding gold. "I didn’t say no to the gun! You brought these things all the way here for me anyway, didn’t you? I’m buying them."

Hunter pursed his lips, suppressing a smirk. "They aren’t cheap."

"Name your price, you swindler." Dravin smirked.

For the next ten minutes, two hardened men haggled like angry grandmothers at a fish market, arguing over every single fish scale until a price was settled. Dravin begrudgingly paid the energy stones, and Hunter, knowing he had pushed his luck as far as it would go, bade his old friend farewell and vanished into through a portal with his group.

The moment the portal waves smoothed out, and Hunter was completely gone, Dravin’s friendly, exasperated face went totally blank. He didn’t waste a second.

Dravin pulled a sleek, a phone from his pocket and dialed emergency number 1. The line connected almost instantly.

"Elliot," Dravin said into the receiver, his eyes staring at the empty space where Hunter had just been standing. "He was just here. Hunter just left my territory."

A heavy, sharp voice came through the speaker. "Are you sure it was him?"

"I’m looking right at the fresh supplies and the gear he brought," Dravin replied, patting the lock gun like it was his new baby. "Oh, he is also traveling through portals now. Two ladies were with him, one a soul maiden."

"Then you should have kept him there you idiot?" Elliot demanded. "What supplies?"

"Weapons that the military would kill to get their hands on. Medicine and packed food as well." Dravin snapped a quick photo of the haul, pressing send. "He tried to dump some weird man eaters on me__"

The call abruptly disconnected. Elliot hadn’t even waited for Dravin to finish his sentence the moment the picture went through.

Dravin pulled the phone away from his ear, staring at the blank screen in total disbelief. "Rude son of a bitch!" He spat, rubbing his temples and cursing at the desert sky. "Hangs up on me?! Man, if that bastard Elliot wasn’t paying me a fortune every month just to keep an eye out for Hunter, I would have fed him to saw worm years ago."

A small part of him did feel guilty for betraying Hunter, but times had changed.

***

Zyra and her team were still studying the plague territory from a far. Bullet told her the moment they landed that something was off. The territory looked like half of it had been attacked by a fire storm, like some angry fire-god had thrown a huge temper tantrum and used the left side of the settlement as an ashtray.

It was hard to say what had caused the destruction without meeting an eyewitness.

"What does the environmental scanner say, Divine maiden?" Etania asked, leaning over Zyra’s shoulder so close that Zyra could smell the stale roasted pumpkin seeds the soul maiden had been chewing on all morning.

Zyra’s eyes did not move from the glowing device. She tapped the crystal screen, watching the heat signatures pulse.

"Well, the good news is, no beasts," Zyra announced, letting out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. "Fortunately." Her first suspicion had been that King bird beast. But it was not here.

"And the bad news?" Bullet muttered, adjusting his ripper gun, which was currently tangled in a stray bush.

Zyra pointed at the lower corner of the screen, where faint red thermal signatures flickered at the far end of a half-crumbled granite building. "There are people back there. Some are laying on the ground, but they’re alive. Vitality is low, but breathing. Those are the subjects we need."

"These people probably dying from the plague or whatever did this left them in bad shape with burns." Etania said.

Zyra placed the environmental scanner back in her bag and snapped the latch shut. She drew her dagger. "Quiet down. We should move cautiously going forward. Weapons pointed. Some beasts can use their environment to camouflage. Remember, we are never safe unless we are home."

They stepped into the territory, boots crunching on scorched earth that was still hot enough to cook an egg. The damage from whatever had torched the place was severe. Thick grey smoke was still evaporating from the charred wooden beams, carrying the sharp scent of burnt flesh, plastic and blood.

Taylor looked around, ducking under a suspended sign that was literally melting onto the cobblestones. He tsked loudly, shaking his head until his topknot swayed. "Man, these poor bastards have really seen hard times. First the flood, then the plague, and now this? What did they do in their past lives?"

"Keep your head on a swivel, Taylor and no charity work." Bullet hissed, trying_ and failing to walk silently in heavy armor boots that went clack-clack-clack with every step.