#sotsog

"My sort?" Silk dropped into her tone inadvertently, turning her deep, hoarse, broken voice into an almost mechanical purr. Fear rippled through the room like ribbons. It was a cool breeze in a suffocating glare of self-importance and Aravis breathed it in.

"You're a bounty-hunter!" Not the bartender, but a nasal, underdeveloped voice called from the crowd of patrons that had interrupted their own meals to gawk like a gaggle around what had been a peaceful evening drink. Aravis didn't bother seeking out the speaker (though she suspected one of the pasty, mealy shepherds seated closer to the entrance. An easy escape, she mused, smart choice.) Her brow, however, creased at his choice of words. Bounty hunters were perhaps the lowest of the low creatures grovelling on the earth's filthy surface. Turning in fellows of your kind for the reward of others? Had they no sense of honour or kinship at all. Had a folcman or woman acted in such a way, they would be plunged beneath the clouds to the endless oceans below and ripped to shreds by the wild, Bacchic merpeople of the depths. Honour, trust, loyalty; mere dramatic concepts to be learned and forgotten by those thugs like poor poetry.

"Now what would give you that idea?" Likely her stature or lack of ladylike grace. Maybe-

"The ends of your hair. They're white." The thought died before it even took shape in her mind. A chill crawled up around her shoulders, turning the thick muscle there into cold stone. She was frozen in place, barely able to open her mouth to reply through gritted teeth, her head bowed lower toward the counter and her tankard rested against her suddenly ringing forehead.

"Why," she ground out, "would that," turning slowly like a tin doll, her eyes flashed, "mark me out?" Moonlight flashed against a bronze knife behind the bar and it set the room aflame. The man- boy really- stood and quaked like a tethered kite before the entrance like it was a headwind. He had a round, dark, unfinished face; the face of a scholar or bard, not a warrior. Nevertheless, Aravis wanted nothing more than to turn it blue with bruises.

"I've heard stories," He shuddered and searched any face but hers for help "my father's a pepper merchant, he told me about you and your kind." The idea of some miserable, slimy, slithering underwalker's tongue speaking of her ‘kind’ made Aravis' fists curl. "Your hair is dark and- and blue, right?" He was slipping, but didn't run. Yet. "He used to say, when- when what was inside your head became darker, your hair literally started paling in comparison... Making the tips turn white... And- I-I thought..."

"Tom Tom, that's enough." Hissed the bartender.

Aravis was very still. Whispers are meant to be lost in the chaos. Aravis’ words were like breaths, yet each one rang in the floorboards and out of the door like the echoes of screams.

"Your father is well-learned. Darkness seeping into every crevice of the mind, turning you into a miasma veiled in flesh? What better fits that description than a callous, underhanded criminal? What could be so dark, so evil, as to turn the tips of my hair so pale?"

With one hand she tore the hood from her head. And not a breath was drawn as their pathetic faces took in the blank, dull cascades, the colour of new snow. Cold and dead. White to the roots.

She closed her eyes when the whispers started seeping into their fear, and as always, before her there stretched a great gash in the clouds on which she, still an adolescent wrapped in sunlight, stood. Beneath that crevice she saw the island of the underwalkers. But she wasn't looking at them. Instead, all that filled her vision was the great, massive warrior lying like unwanted venison beside the hulking, grotesque, monstrous corpse of a Beanstalk. And the underwalkers were dancing. At their head, leading them on there stood a creature of pale flesh and golden hair. To others he might have looked like a child, beautiful and beaming. Aravis knew what he really was. The axe was still in his hands. That smiling, glittering face was the last thing she saw before the vision cleared and Aravis opened her eyes to the bar counter. 

Shards of metal and broken wood lay before her. Her hand was bloodied by purple ichor. Still lodged within the cut were some remains of the crushed tankard. But it was her eyes that were burning with pain.

The whispers had ceased. And so had the roar in her veins. She was ice.

Standing, she swept her cloak aside to rest both hands on her hips, her feet apart. She was taller now than she had been when she entered, and now the crest of her ringed headband just skimmed the ceiling. Everybody in the room cowered below her. It felt right.

"Indeed. I am a hunter. But what I'm after is not the reward of a slippery, stupid nobleman. It is justice. And it is mine alone." the low rasp of her voice grew full and round as pride swelled within, "as a daughter of the mighty Laestrygonians."

At the name of her folc, new horror trickled into slow running red blood all around her. So many eyes darted to the door, for escape. Many more became fixed on her lips or, more specifically, on the teeth that lay behind them. Aravis didn’t need to be a mind mage to know they were wondering how much mortal flesh had been shredded upon them. That stout bartender was the first to finish quivering.

"Who do you seek, great Giantess? I will tell you all that I know, just don't hurt any of my customers, I beg of you!" Ugh. Begging. Typical underwalkers.

"I'm hunt Prince Jack of Gaul. As I have for almost ten years." Voice rising such that everyone might hear, she let fear carry her words. "He has taken something very precious from me, many things in fact, and I intend to exact justice."

“But, he’s been missing over three years! Many young princes have been.” Aravis was well aware of that. So close. She had been so close she could see the ridiculous peak of his hair, illuminated under dragon fire. But the presence of one of the more powerful fae had forced to keep her distance. But she had him cornered. It was almost over. And then he was gone.

“Haven’t you heard? They’re back, now.” Every head turned back to the scholarly boy by the entrance. “Yeah, the entire Fearless-”

But Aravis was deaf to the world.

They’re back now. He’s back now. He’s back. Again, and again, and again. The sound of clouds being split down the middle and the shining eyes of the blonde, beautiful murderer. And dancing. Aravis’ eyes were filled with axes, ichor and dancing.

Her bident spear was in her hand one moment and whistling across the room the next. The boy- Tom Tom he’d been called- was pinned between its prongs like a fish, flailing and panicked. He grasped at the twin spikes which were twice as thick as his arm. As Aravis strode over, he just resisted going limp.

With her feelings crashing and shrieking in her head, Aravis paid no attention to the fact that the ceiling had splintered around it. She didn’t notice the splinters to timber that clawed at her waist, nor the frigid night air whipping her face as she waded through the bar like mud. People the size of dolls scurried for the exit, while the one she wanted remained pinned. Until she knelt down and gripped the long handle of her weapon, pushing it closer into his throat.

“Where?” Was all she managed. Everything inside was a storm that even she herself was becoming lost in.

“I- I don’t know! I was told by a friend!”

“WHERE?!” Her bellow ricocheted off the dark sky itself like thunder and the bident spear-head pressed harder against his trachea until he gasped for air.

“STONEBURY!” Violent sobs wracked his body but Aravis did not relent, “GLASS STONEBURY! MY FRIEND HORNER IS IN GLASS STONEBURY! HE CAN TELL YOU!”

Only then, with a grunt of dark satisfaction did she pull the spear from the wall, releasing him. With the first real, tangible feeling she had felt in years melting into her veins, she shrank back down until she was practically the same stature she had been when she had arrived. The bar’s roof was gone, allowing freezing wind to howl through. She cared not.

Aravis finished a drink that had been abandoned on a table in the panic. It was revolting, crude stuff, typical for underwalkers. But a smile was curled on her face regardless.

"What will you do once you find the prince? He's a hero, and has many powerful friends!" So the bartender had stayed, she hadn’t counted on that. She graciously turned to look at him, feeling lighter than she had in almost four years.

"Simple. I will rend his arms from his sides. I will cast his broken body across the air until each and every bone is ground into dust."

"They'll see you coming, people have already run to tell others of you."

"You speak as if I’d intended this to be a slaughter. You are wrong.” Aravis’ hood fell to the floor and her hand reached into her satchel. She sighed softly when her fingers met the gentle, rippling fabric of her cloak. Her mother’s cloak. “It’s an execution.” she pulled it free, letting it grow in size until it could wrap around her completely. Her legs and torso disappeared from sight. “And I must have him know his sentence.”

Turning, she vanished behind the concealment of the cloak and into the darkness of the night. The Engle Lands were solitary, located deep in the marshes of Fairytale Island. 

It wasn’t far to Glass Stonebury. And then all that was left was to find this Horner.

Just an intro that I couldn't get out of my head since creating Aravis (her name was Astrid originally). I kinda want to write a whole fic about this but I'm not sure since it would be pretty much all my ocs... I'm imagining basically zootopia but with a Giant princess and a bounty hunter.