by Travis Bughi
The thunderbird would pass over Emily’s hiding spot, and she would rise up from the grass to reveal herself to the world. She was a full amazon in her dreams, not the amazon-in-training she was in reality. In Emily’s dreams, she was capable of shooting arrows as fast as a gunslinger could fire bullets, and with just as much accuracy. Also, Emily’s borrowed leather skirt and vest were covered in metal studs just like those of the other amazons she was traveling with. Only one thing remained unchanged: she still held the treantwood recurve bow that her mother had given her. Emily held that bow at the ready now and watched the herd approach.
The eighteen behemoths coming towards her were just as massive and as powerful as Emily would expect. They shook the ground with every step, walking on their four gargantuan legs and swinging their heads back and forth on their short necks. The weeds that weren’t crushed by their steps were flattened by their tails as they swished back and forth behind them. They were headed home, and they were in a hurry.
The thunderbird screeched again. It was stalking the behemoths, seeking to kill either one or all of them. If the thunderbird got the chance, it would clap its wings together and strike lightning down on all of them. Fortunately, it chose not to, instead flying overhead and waiting for the beasts to approach.
The behemoths appeared to be moving slowly, but each step was a great leap for a human. Within moments of seeing them, Emily was within bow range. Unfortunately, the thick, leathery hides of her targets were all but impenetrable, so she could only aim for one spot: the eyes. Those tiny targets, sunk deep into a behemoth’s head, were their only vulnerability, but Emily had no worry of missing her mark. The problem wasn’t in killing a behemoth, but in selecting the correct one. Emily didn’t want to kill just any of the beasts; she was after a particular one. It was a killer, a murderer, an evil behemoth that had betrayed its own kind.
The traitor.
It was the traitor who called the thunderbird. That behemoth wanted to kill its own kind and to kill Emily. That was why the thunderbird was waiting. It was waiting for the traitor’s cue to strike, and Emily could not let that happen.
The behemoths stepped closer, and the ground trembled under their massive weight. Their lumbering bodies, some as big as a barn, swayed ever so slightly in the ceaseless wind. Emily held steady even as the dirt shook under her feet. She could take any one of them down with a single arrow at any moment, but it was imperative that she only hit the guilty one. The others were innocent, kind, and harmless.
Emily looked up into the piercing blue sky and then back down again. She wished, as she did every night in her dream, that she could kill the thunderbird. However, it was too big, too strong, and too fast. Compared to Emily, the thunderbird was a majestically supreme creature.
No, only the traitor could be killed, unfortunately. Emily could only hope to strike before the thunderbird did.
Eighteen? Why are there only eighteen?
The ground shuddered now as the behemoths stepped closer. Time was running out. Emily shook the questions from her mind and cursed herself for spending these last precious moments so carelessly. She had spent too long waiting, and now the behemoths were close enough that the traitor could charge her. Emily had to fire first. She had to kill the traitor, save the rest of the herd, and save her own life in the process.
Then, suddenly, she saw it. One of the behemoths was watching Emily with hate-filled eyes. It wanted her dead; she could tell. Any moment it would charge, so she raised her bow, drew back the string, steadied the arrow, and judged the distance. She would only get one chance. Just before she released the string, she exhaled, and together her breath and the arrow sailed forward in the open air. Her breath dissolved around her, but the arrow sunk into the behemoth’s left eye.
The traitor bellowed in agony and twisted its head violently. It reared up high enough to blot out the sun and then collapsed to the ground.
Emily had done it. She’d saved them all.
And that’s when it happened. Every time, in every dream, on every night, it would happen. Just as the behemoth fell to the ground and Emily sighed in relief, the banshee would attack. Emily didn’t see it in her dream. She never saw it in her dream. All of a sudden, she would hear a banshee screech, wail, and cry out, and Emily’s blood would run cold. She’d turn her eyes from the behemoths, from the eighteen, now seventeen, behemoths and finally realize why one was missing.
The traitor hadn’t been a behemoth at all. She was a banshee, a decaying harbinger of death, and Emily was far too late to stop her. The banshee’s screams and wails would devolve into laughter, a cackling, coughing, shrieking laughter. It was the laugh of an insane mind that had outsmarted her, outlasted her, and wanted to kill her.
Then, the banshee would take her soul, grasping her spirit in a stranglehold, and drain her life away. It was slow, so painfully slow. The behemoths stopped to watch, tears dripping from their tiny, horror-filled eyes, and Emily knew they could do nothing to help her. They could only watch with great, wet cheeks as Emily faded. When she looked up, she saw the thunderbird smiling down on her. It would feast on them all now that Emily had failed. Slowly, her world would grow dim and dark, the thunderbird soaring over them would fade to black, and the last thing Emily would hear was the sound of the banshee cackling in madness.
Then she’d lurch awake in the middle of the night, gripping her neck and gasping for air. Sweat would pour from her face, and her skin would be cold to the touch. She’d look around with her head whirling in all directions, searching. Yet the banshee was never there. Every night she’d see the same thing: nineteen amazons lying around her, sleeping peacefully.
No. Not nineteen amazons. There were only eighteen.
One was the traitor.
Chapter 1
“Again!” Adelpha commanded.
The amazon princess threw the dirt clod through the air. Emily tracked it with her bow, judging the harmless projectile’s trajectory and velocity with the only split second she had. Emily released her arrow and hoped that, for once, she would hit it.
Emily had requested to have non-moving targets at first. She’d never shot a bow in her life until about a few months ago and was sure there was no way she’d hit anything if it wasn’t stationary. However, neither Adelpha nor Emily’s grandmother, Chara, would budge on amazon training methods.
“And what good will a bow do you if you can’t hit moving enemies?” Chara had asked. “Do you expect the next ogre who attacks you will just stand still and let you aim casually?”
Emily hadn’t answered, only sighed. She guessed her grandmother was right about that, but after months of traveling and practicing, she was really beginning to question Chara’s words. Emily had yet to hit a single target, and this arrow missed, as well, passing under the dirt clod to strike the ground somewhere in the distance. The arrow and the clod both disappeared into the tall, yellow grass of the Great Plains. Like it had with so many other things, the landscape seemed to swallow the two objects whole.
The group, all amazons, said nothing as they watched Emily miss her mark again. It had been funny the first few times, making everyone stop and laugh because Emily was truly an awkward sight to see. She had taken several seconds to pull out an arrow, several seconds more to nock it, and then even longer to pull into a position to shoot. When Adelpha had thrown that first dirt clod, Emily had missed by far enough to be considered blind. She’d bruised her arm in the process, too, the string slapping her forearm as she’d released her horribly aimed arrow.
The amazons had nearly laughed themselves to death, and Emily’s cheeks had burned red hot. It was from that moment on that she began to improve, and her mistakes quickly lost their humor. First, she began to release the arrow at the correct time. The arrow and dirt would fly together, though they never connected. Next, she stopped hitting her forearm with the string, which was something she was desperately proud of, and if she was not overwhelmed with relief, her arm certainly appreciated it. All the whil
e, she was taking less and less time to fire another arrow and getting closer and closer to hitting her target.
Yet she still wasn’t close enough.
A miss, whether a close miss or a far miss, was still a miss. In a real fight, Emily’s efforts would be wasted if they were not flawless. That was why occasional laughter still arose from the amazons, although smiles were much more frequent. Adelpha, the amazon princess and Emily’s designated trainer, never smiled though. And neither did Chara, of course, though she offered words of encouragement.
Chara had been the one to recruit Emily from her home. Back then, Emily had been a lowly, sixteen-year-old, farmer’s daughter with an abundant appetite for the unknown. She’d grown up knowing a very simple life of growing crops, trading with gnomes, hiring minotaurs, avoiding banshees and thunderbirds, admiring gunslingers, and hunting behemoths. As extravagant as it sounded to a foreigner, that lifestyle had never satisfied her. She’d wanted to explore the beyond and especially to see the grand city of Lucifan, the city ruled by angels and knights and plagued by vampires and ogres. When she finally had seen the wondrous metropolis by the ocean, her thirst to explore was only deepened rather than slaked.
So, naturally, when Chara offered her the chance to become an amazon, Emily accepted. It wasn’t until she joined their ranks that she found that one of the amazons had developed a malevolent plan to kill Adelpha, capture a basilisk, and deliver it to a vampire named Count Drowin in Lucifan.
Emily could easily picture the vampire’s smile. It was cold, like the air around him, and beautiful despite the threat of its two sharp fangs. Just the thought of him made her skin form bumps, but it was his immortality that worried her most. Outside of the sun’s light, an angel’s eyes, or a basilisk’s poison, vampires had little to fear. They were timeless and healed quickly, and Count Drowin surely considered a little farmer who couldn’t properly shoot an arrow to be the least of his worries. In that regard, Emily hoped to prove him wrong.
She had plenty of time before she’d face him again, fortunately. Being that she and the other amazons were several months from Lucifan meant that there was nowhere for the vampire to hide from the harsh sun. He would not follow them, and at the same time, there was no need. Drowin had an ally amongst the amazon ranks, a traitorous partner who sat in comfort, ready to strike when the opportune moment arose. She was probably even enjoying the trip, whomever she was.
The trip was the amazons’ annual journey to Lucifan. They lived in the jungles of Themiscyra in the southwest, and to get back home, they had to traverse several locations. First, they had traveled northwest from Lucifan, reaching the very northern edge of the Great Plains where ceaseless, rolling hills met the sharp, granite rocks of the Khaz Mal Mountains. Once there, they had traveled west beneath the mountain range.
Logic would dictate that they travel due southwest across the Great Plains for the shortest distance, but this was impractical because the Great Plains had an infinite capacity for grass and hills with little to no water. On the Great Plains, families relied on wells. So, instead, the amazons went north first for one reason only; it was spring time, and the melting snow from the mountains provided plenty of water for the long journey.
When Emily had first sipped from a small stream that traveled down the cliffs, she had asked her grandmother what was in the Khaz Mal and what lay beyond them.
“Surely you’ve heard of dragons, Daughter?” Chara always referred to Emily as ‘daughter’, as was customary in amazon tradition. “No? Well, I’ve never actually seen one, but they are among the few creatures that live up in that area, along with dwarves and orcs. The mountains don’t provide much in the way of food, so only the rugged live up there. And beyond those steep rocks lies nothing but frozen wastelands, the home of the vikings, griffins, and who knows what else. I much prefer the warm jungle to be entirely honest.”
Emily had been satisfied with that answer, though Chara had brought up more unknowns than were solved. Besides, Emily’s primary curiosity lay to the west, not the north. Once the amazons had made the long trip across the Great Plains, they would reach the Forest of Angor. From there, they would then travel due south to get home, to the jungles of Themiscyra.
Emily had dreamed of Angor since she’d first learned of its existence from the stories of travelers. The landscape was a grove of trees that extended so deep you couldn’t see through it. She’d been told of the creatures that lived there: elves, centaurs, treants, bugbears, hippogriffs and so many more that she couldn’t even remember their names. It had all seemed so foreign to her, strange beyond all comprehension. However, that had only intrigued her more. Just yesterday, Emily had seen the first tent of green on the horizon, and her heart had skipped a beat.
The Forest of Angor! she’d thought. It was so . . . green. The forest was just a smudge of color far off in the distance, but it was so enticing. Emily had seen land of only two colors in her life: the yellow of the Great Plains and the grey of Lucifan and Khaz Mal. Now she was seeing a whole new color, and it was wondrous.
Among those trees were all the creatures she’d heard of and maybe even more that she hadn’t. Emily wished she could see them all, but the amazons were only interested in one of those creatures: the treants. A treant, according to Chara, was a tree shepherd. They were about four times the height of a human and looked like a human made into a tree. Their skin was bark, their arms were branches, and their legs were trunks. Emily had never seen such a creature, so she could not picture them. However, with the forest so close, she’d soon get her chance.
The reason the amazons wanted to find a treant was because their wood was special. It was light, strong, and did not rot. For this reason, it was perfect bow material, and there were plenty of expecting mothers that needed bows for unborn girls. Treantwood was also the only material in the world that was resistant to a basilisk’s poison. The traitor wanted treantwood for that very reason, and Emily was determined to stop her. Anyone caught not making a bow would expose themselves for whom they were, though Emily longed to catch the wench before that.
Of course, treants did not give up their wood willingly. Although the amazons only cut what they needed and never killed a treant, the tree shepherds were far from eager to give up parts of their body for use by others. Strong rope was needed to bring them down, and they fought back every time. If given the chance, they would kill those that tried to take from them. More than one careless amazon had been crushed by the strength of a treant that wasn’t ready to give up yet. Adelpha and her younger sister, Heliena, had described the gory details, and Emily had shuddered at the tale before vowing that she wouldn’t be the next such story.
And that was why it was so important for her to hit a flying clod of dirt.
“Again, Emily! And this time, try not to squint like a pixie,” Adelpha chided.
The amazon princess reached down and grabbed a handful of grass from the plains. She pulled hard and the roots of the grass pulled up a packed dirt ball that was perfect for throwing. Adelpha used her hunting knife to cut the grass off so only the dirt remained and tossed it up in the air a few times to test its weight. Once she was satisfied, she stretched back her arm to throw it. Like always, she didn’t bother to see if Emily was ready before throwing the dirt clod. It soared fast like every throw, allowing only one precious second for Emily to hit the target.
Emily was already in position. In one fluid motion, she drew and nocked a single arrow. She never drew more than one now, and she no longer had to look at her hands. The arrow had been placed, pulled back, and was ready to fire before the dirt had even left Adelpha’s hand. Once the clod was airborne, Emily tracked its course, estimated its speed, judged its path, aimed her arrow, drew back to the proper length, held her breath and released, hoping against all hope that she would hit her target.
The arrow missed, just barely passing under its target.
Emily sighed, expelling her air. Adelpha used her bigger lungs to sigh louder. Adelpha was a
tall woman and a couple of years older than Emily. She was large, too, though not overweight. All amazons were warrior women and thus strong to the core. Instead, Adelpha was just a bit bigger than most others. She was taller and broader in the chest than some men, too, Emily’s brothers included. This did not impede the amazon princess, though, especially when it came to teaching Emily. Also, neither did their friendship.
After the events in Lucifan, and both to Emily’s surprise and relief, the two women had formed a sort of bond that Emily could only assume hinged on sisterhood. It was a friendship in which Adelpha gave no sympathy and allowed no slack, but gave unyielding devotion. Emily, who’d never had a sister or even another girl to call a friend, had responded in kind by returning that devotion.
Would that every amazon shared that feeling with Emily, she would be the happiest girl in the world.
“Just give up, farmer,” came a voice from behind them. “It’s not too late to run home. You know the way, yes?”
Following the voice was another person’s snide, cackling laughter that was just a bit overdone. Emily didn’t bother to turn around. She already knew whom the two were.
The one who spoke was named Belen. She was a lot of things to a lot of people, but most importantly, she was the queen’s best friend, the queen being Adelpha’s aunt, Stefani. Since Stefani was home in Themiscyra, though, Adelpha was the highest in rank, but Belen still held some sway. Amazon rule was not absolute like one would expect. Adelpha held more influence, but the others were allowed to argue with her—a privilege most often used. Belen’s close friendship with the queen granted her both power and influence, as well, and she did not hesitate to use either. This, combined with her confident aura, granted her many allies among the amazons.
The most annoying of those allies was Gaia, and she’d been the one to cackle. She was Belen’s shadow in every comment and stride, quick to laugh too hard and more than eager to offer boastful praise. She was younger than Belen, but still much older than Emily. As for her stature, only Adelpha was taller. However, Gaia made up for that in bulk and had no qualms about throwing her weight around. Wherever Belen wished to sit, Gaia was there to make room with an overzealous nudge.
