Monster Punk Horizon

Chapter 1: The Hunters of the Monstrous Continent

* * *

“Hey, which of these poses shows off my greatsword gems the best?” Jaz asked.

To all surrounding eyes, the young woman stood on a rough, weathered table in the middle of the canteen. To hers, though, that table was a spotlight-flooded stage, and she cycled through a variety of postures for maximum show. First, an intrepid chest thrust out to all challengers; next a sassy over-the-shoulder wink and hair flip; then an adorable clasp of the hands better suited to a mainland pop star; and finally a deliriously sultry stretch across the crowded tabletop that rivaled the surrounding rainforest for sheer steam.

Of course, in her red monsterskin hot pants and other … “armor,” it wasn’t as if she needed any help in that department.

A riotous cheer rose from all those seated at her table, except for Pix.

Jaz’s hunting partner was a pointy-eared human with a practical red pixie cut, armored in practical pieces of plate mail and leather with lots of practical pouches and pockets, and a practical scowl that was having none of this nonsense but was also too used to it to complain.

Instead she just rolled her eyes.

“It’s a greatsword, Jaz. It shows itself off.”

“Oh?” Jaz replied. “Think I should keep it simple, then?”

She hopped to her feet in the middle of the table, reached for the hefty hilt protruding over her shoulder, and with a bold “BEHOLD!” flung the greatsword forward for all to see.

Truly, it was a masterpiece.

Its shining monsterbone blade stretched nearly as tall as she did, gleaming white in the morning suns like a newly polished pearl and sparkling with the reflection of the Dazzling Skies above. A blunt section on one side near the hilt gleamed with Onyxaur hide, bone, and horns—she liked to use as much of the monster as she could, after all—inset with a constellation of gleaming gems.

The table squealed at the exquisite shine of the display. If diamonds were a girl’s best friend, Monstrous Diamonds were skydamn marriage material, and Jaz had a harem.

Of course, the gems served a purpose other than fashion (though that was a definite plus). One cluster strengthened the blade so she could go longer without stopping to maintain it; another lightened it so she could wield it faster; another gave the blade a chance to cut deeper, despite the previous set of gems; and one gem made her more likely to attract bugs, which was not a strategic part of the build she was going for, but that particular gem had a gorgeous fire, especially for a bug gem, and she wasn’t about to waste it.

The final gem, though, stood out from the others. This was partly because the sword’s forte had been completely re-embellished to accommodate it, but mainly because it was the most colossal Stellaric Opal any of them had ever seen. Its domed cabochon cut showed off an entire spectrum of color that undulated in the light as if by its own independent consciousness. Maybe it was conscious. After all, there were already weirder things in this world.

Pix rolled her eyes again.

“I can’t believe you got one of the rarest gems on the continent and you’re using it to beat on monsters.”

“Excuse you, I don’t beat on monsters unless they present an immediate and active threat to the ecosystem or Skull Harbor,” Jaz retorted. “Besides, it allows me to do every sort of mysteric damage. That would take a whole sword of slots the traditional way.”

“But mysteric damage isn’t the point of a greatsword.”

“Don’t care. It’s shiny. And it’s not like it interferes with my ability to wail on things.”

The rest of the table nodded in agreement, and for once Pix had to agree with them.

Pix and Jaz’s companions made for a motley bunch. The first of their friends was a seven-foot-tall humanoid cat with cobalt blue fur, a punk leather jacket and sunglasses, and an opalescent plume of spiked hair. The second was a broad and dark man blessed with a head of luscious vines and well-tended branches that he was at least partially tree. The third was a little dragon pig that no one was going to eat because “Aww, look at his cute lil’ wings and horns and snoot!”—and also because they’d tried once, but he burp-snorted a plume of fire and it was so adorable even his most ruthless assailants collapsed in squeals of incapacitated bliss.

They weren’t even the most motley crew in the canteen.

“I gotta say, though,” the Cat Punk began, “That’s the most regal sword I’ve ever seen, but it kinda clashes with your face.”

“You mean it can’t live up to the majesty of all this?” Jaz said, and flipped her hair again for maximum effect.

Of course, the hair flip was much less dramatic than likely intended. All but the last few inches of her black hair had been pressed down under the edge of a long-necked dragon head with long ears and long, stuffed horns that looked like it had been drawn by a five-year-old, then sewn together by someone who had only just figured out what a stitch was. A little tongue poked out of its X-stitched mouth in an eternal raspberry and did nothing to diminish the absolute silliness of the mask, even as it swayed majestically in its simulated wind. It had been stuffed in such a way that it wobbled precariously on her head, as if under the influence of a blustery wind or underwater current.

“She means you look like a windsock,” Pix replied.

“I’ll have you know this is an important icon of my family heritage and also makes a very good lure for bird monsters,” Jaz retorted.

“Never mind that,” the Tree Man laughed, then continued with a mischievous grin: “How did someone like you even end up with a Stellaric Opal?”

Jaz replied with a voice that suggested narrowed eyes behind her mask:

“What do you mean ‘someone like me,’ Tree?”

“I mean someone who hasn’t even hired a Khatoyant and who’s just barely hunted her first Ignifex. Stellaric Opals are only found in the chests of titan-scale monsters, and I know you didn’t take one of those down without a whole band of helpers.”

“Okay, real talk?” Jaz raised her greatsword as if to shield the rest of the canteen from a secret. “I found it.”

“You found a Stellaric Opal just lying in the jungle?”

“No, I found the whole monster, already dead. Completely un-looted. Judging by the foot in its mouth, I’d say someone took it on and it choked on ‘em after it ate ‘em. Unfortunate situation all around, but I wasn’t about to dishonor their sacrifice by letting it go to waste.”

“You didn’t think to check who it was?” Pix exclaimed. “If anyone deserves that opal, it’s the hunter’s next of kin!”

“Of course I did, but they were already decomposing, and no one’s filed a missing hunter report, so whoever it was, no one’s missing ‘em.”

“Probably another Chosen One, then,” the Cat Punk shrugged.

“That’s savage, Ha’ti,” Pix glared.

“She’s not wrong, though,” Tree replied. “Every time a Chosen One falls from the sky, it just makes more trouble for us.”

“I didn’t mind this one so much,” Jaz replied, admiring her opal.

“Yeah, but every time a Chosen One goes into the jungle, they think their Chosenness gives them the ability to control monsters we can’t even touch, and then we end up saving the Harbor from a stampede or some other nonsense.”

“To be fair, we do get a lot of good meat out of those days,” Jaz chimed.

Dragon Pig burp-snorted a plume of fire and then started on the bacon on Tree’s plate.

“That’s savage, Dragon Pig,” Pix glared, but couldn’t hold the glare long, because even eating the flesh of his own kind, he was the most adorable cannibal to ever set foot on the Monstrous Continent.

“Pix is right, though,” Tree nodded. “A hunter has passed to the skies beyond, and even Chosen Ones deserve a bit of tribute.” He thumped on the table, and the four of them raised their flagons. “To ... that guy. We don’t know who you were, but you died in the jaws of a legend, and there is no more honorable way for a hunter to go.”

“Except fighting the legend,” Jaz chimed.

“We don’t speak of such things at memorials!” Tree exclaimed. He thumped the table again, and all four drained their flagons with gusto and crashed them back to the tabletop.

Ha’ti stared over her dark glasses as Jaz pulled the base of her dragon neck back down over her mouth, and then she glanced to Pix as if she’d been waiting for something.

“So … you’re not going to comment on your partner’s using her own head for a lure?”

Pix sighed as she stacked their empty plates together.

“It brings another saying to mind: ‘It’s not a dumb idea if it works.’ Plus she’s so hard-headed it’d take a Nutpidge to crack her skull.”

“A Great Nutpidge!” Tree corrected.

“A Titan Nutpidge!” Jaz boasted.

“A Legendary Nutpidge!” a Khatoyant shouted from a nearby table.

“A Luminescent Nutpidge!” another cat person shouted from another table, and so on across the canteen, for there were as many types of Nutpidge as there were hunters in all the Harbor, and none of them were equal to the famous hardness of Jaz’s head.

It continued all the way through Stellaric Nutpidge until a new guy tromped in on the end of the conversation and whined, “We’re eating Nutpidge again?”

“You want something other than Nutpidge, you hunt it down and bring it to me yourself, you crouton,” snarled the old cat lady in front of the roaring kitchen fire.

But because the snarl came from the only voice in the harbor that was sweeter than sugar cookies, the only face that was more beloved than Dragon Pig’s, and the only set of secret muscle that had ever successfully wrestled Tree to the ground, the rest of the canteen howled at the newcomer. He cowered in apology until the Khatoyant patted his hand with an articulated paw to let him know all was forgiven.

Not that he would have disagreed with any Khatoyant. Three feet tall, bipedal, and catlike in every other way, Khatoyants could bring most hunters to their knees, squealing at a well-timed flash of their huge, sparkling eyes. They hadn’t yet met another race they couldn’t wrap around their little paws—other cat races like Ha’ti’s included—and that singular trait formed the backbone of their entire civilization.

The cook was no exception, except perhaps in that beneath her cozy cloak, she’d somehow transcended the limits of standard Khatoyant size, measuring five feet in any direction with a personality to match.

“Delicious as always, Darla,” Pix said as she returned their plates to the cook’s workspace.

The fluffy cat lady took them with a sweet grin and effortless grip and replied:

“Well, it could always be someone’s last meal here, so I figure I’d send them off with a good one. It’d be pleasant if you come back again, though.”

She sent them off with a cheery wave as if she hadn’t just said she expected them to die, but then they were used to that. Today’s tribute alone showed that she wasn’t wrong, and the Chosen One was hardly the first hunter to meet his match—and maker—on this unconquered continent.

It had been named the Monstrous Continent all those centuries ago for a reason, and by this point the only people here were the ones who enjoyed the challenge of living in a wild and untamed land, where monstrous beasts roamed free amidst equally monstrous beauties.

The alternative was to return to the mainland—the Wondrous Continent—which was a bit of a misnomer considering that it was fully settled with few great creatures to instill wonder and, admittedly, occasional terror. After all, what was life without that occasional burst of mortal adrenaline?

Hella boring, so the hunters said.

* * *

“So what’s in your logbook today?” Tree asked once they’d slid down the zipline to Harbor Center.

The center was the only truly flat expanse of this area. Skull Harbor was built upon a massive colonnade of columnar joints—enormous, polygonal stone pillars that suggested a lava flow of apocalyptic scale at some point in the distant past. In modern times, though, facing the Dazzling Seas, it made for a convenient natural fortress, impregnable except for a few geographically weak spaces and the efforts of the most determined monsters.

Travel in the harbor would have been exhausting, but an elaborate system of bridges, ziplines, and chain lifts connected all the geological platforms and their associated stations—Darla’s canteen, the blacksmith, the bonesmith, the armorer, the lapidary, and the various other shops that made up Monster Market. It all culminated in the crowning jewel at the top of the columnar rise—not literally a jewel, but rather a line of massive sun-bleached skulls, the products of old, legendary hunts. A small team of Khatoyants scurried in and out of their braincases, cleaning and maintaining them for when the Harbor would call upon their services, their faces deadly serious.

For the Skull Organ was serious business, and every hunter hoped to hear it.

Pix unhooked her grappler and jumped off the line with a practiced grace, then pulled her logbook from her hip-pack. It was a well-worn thing with plenty of bookmarks, tabs, and folded-down pages, all bound in the toughest leather she’d been able to find at the harbor market. It wouldn’t survive the jungle otherwise, and without it she wouldn’t survive the jungle.

Officially known as the Hunter’s Handbook, it contained detailed information on the monsters the hunters had encountered thus far, from their habits and territory to their weaknesses, in the likely event they became aggressive. It was an indispensable piece of equipment for even the most experienced hunters.

“There haven’t been any good postings lately, so I thought we’d catch up on basic surveys,” she said, flicking through her notes pages. “Bit of gathering. See if anything’s crystallizing. We could always mine more gems to sell to the mainland.”

“Speaking of which, the Harlequin Mantis was looking a bit gemmy last time I was out,” Jaz chimed. “We could give her a chiticure before she starts rampaging it off.”

“A chiticure?” Ha’ti asked.

“Like a manicure or pedicure, but for chitin.”

“I don’t accept that as an actual word,” Pix said.

“If the Queen of the Jungle Bugs likes it, it’s a real word.”

“She’s not the Queen of the Jungle Bugs. You made that up, too.”

“You try telling her that, ‘cause I’m not gonna.”

Pix rolled her eyes again. “What about you?” she asked Tree.

“Gotta give my wyvern another bath,” Tree said. “I’m still cleaning slime out of his feathers from last week’s salvage. I only just got his wings clean.”

“Now that you mention it, I think I’m going to get an actual mani-pedi—” Ha’ti began.

She was interrupted by the sky itself, which split open with a thunderous crack.

Chapter 2: The Pirates of the Dazzling Skies

* * *

Rips of deep black tore across the sparkling daytime stars like massive claws ripping through the cloth of the universe.

But they were used to that by now.

The hunters on the shoreline scrambled for their mounts and shot into the Dazzling Skies.

The Dazzling Skies were so called because they shone even during the height of day with what looked like a whole galaxy of stars, gleaming through the bright purple-blue of the atmosphere like the luster of the most dazzling jewel. In actuality they were not stars, but portals to other worlds, too high to reach by hunter means, but high enough to drop random stuff out of the sky in spectacular fashion.

“Change of plans!” Ha’ti shouted.

At once she and Tree bolted to the shore and one of several wyver-aeries planted there. Riding wyverns of all sorts burst from the open roofs in blasts of feathers and leathery wings, all saddled with a begoggled rider who flew as if they’d been waiting for this exact moment—which, judging by the plates abandoned at the little lounge outside, they had. Those who hadn’t now bottlenecked at the door, jamming the entry as the early birds swooped down in a cacophony of screeches and jeers.

The noises all blended together into a general, unintelligible discord of insults, but the loss didn’t matter. The insults invigorated the late hunters.

Ha’ti launched over the bottleneck as only a cat person could; Tree simply barreled through as only a living battering ram could; and soon both found their mounts: two green, broad-winged Albateals, already saddled by the wyver-aerie attendants. Tree leapt onto his, Ha’ti onto hers, and both latched themselves in before yanking their own goggles over their eyes and unfurling the short red banner of a savage fire-breathing pig with an eyepatch.

“Dragon Pig Pirates are go!” Ha’ti shouted, and with a glorious fist bump, she and Tree launched into the riotous sky.

A more accurate name, perhaps, would have been the “Dragon Pig Salvagers,” but it didn’t have the same glamorous ring as “Pirates,” and besides, the original was not entirely inaccurate.

It took some time for the loot to fall to heights the wyverns could handle, and in the meantime, the riders cartwheeled through the sky like a swarm of ravenous berserker seabirds hellbent for their first glance of sky snacks. They used anything they could to distract the other riders from bagging their quarry, firing smoke bombs, flash bombs, stink bombs, and the like.

The wind this high was such that they couldn’t shout insults without the air dashing the sound to oblivion, but they were resourceful hunters, and they’d found their alternative.

Ha’ti and Tree wove and plunged around skyborne obstacles on wyverns chosen for precisely that purpose. Albateals had wingspans that could ride hurricane winds for the fun of it, but could compress those wings against a long, streamlined body to spear fish from heights that fish couldn’t comprehend, at speeds they could comprehend even less.

Which made them perfect for diving at fellow salvagers.

But also, loot.

Ha’ti spotted the first speck of treasure as it descended and adjusted her goggles for a better look. The lenses telescoped to reveal … a chunk of earth, followed by a literal pile of trash. But this wasn’t just any trash. It was sky trash, and that gave it worth beyond value.

There was no consistency to what fell from the sky. Often it was people or other life forms, which accounted for much of the population under the Dazzling Skies, but just as often it was random, alien objects of wildly-unknown use. Nonetheless, the inconsistent deliveries fueled a raging skyfound market. People across the continents were willing to barter outrageous sums of gems for things simply because they fell from the sky, often out of curiosity alone, which meant that this trash was Ha’ti’s trash and screw anyone who got in her way.

She shot a red smoke bomb to alert Tree to the incoming haul—but an infinitesimal moment later, a purple bomb burst next to it, and a flock of purple-bannered wyverns shot up and netted both catches.

“Skydamn Waspas! That was ours!” Ha’ti yowled into the wind, and though the Waspas couldn’t hear her, they could certainly see the gesture she sent, and returned it as a smug, unified whole as they drifted down past her, victorious.

Well. Ha’ti had a whole pouch of stink bombs specifically for that purpose. She unlatched her podlauncher from her saddle—a simple combination of a high-tension slingshot and a rifle, not lethal enough to harm but definitely strong enough to piss off, which was exactly what she’d intended it for.

But then another red pod exploded above her. Tree had fired, and whatever was falling now was moving.

“Ugh!” Ha’ti groaned. But they had to go for this one. Harbor rules. Living beings took precedence over loot.

Ha’ti nudged her mount with her heel and pulled it up. With any luck, it wouldn’t be too sentient. Maybe a livestock animal or a toy pet. That way she could at least barter it for some gems.

But as she rose higher, she began to realize that this creature was no toy.

It wasn’t even livestock.

Her wyvern faltered, the air beginning to thin beyond its comfort.

The creature above was still falling, and it was enormous.

No one in the sky saw more than that.

* * *

“That boy’s been eating his veggies,” Pix observed from the shore.

The creature tumbled end over end in the manner of one who had suddenly found the terra firma beneath its feet not so firm after all. Its long, black limbs thrashed as it tried to right itself in the air. It fell so fast they couldn’t see how many limbs, or what kind—some flailed with solidity, others with whiplike motions like tentacles or antennae—but regardless, they could see sharp, fierce-looking horns sprouting from every other surface, and creatures didn’t grow those unless they had a use for them.

“You don’t get that big by eating veggies …” Jaz observed darkly.

“Factually incorrect, but I know what you mean,” Pix replied.

That was when the creature found its bearings.

Two gigantic, leathery wings snapped out from its back, throttling a massive gust of wind into the scrambled salvagers and knocking them about like butterflies on a blustery day. The riders may as well have been butterflies, as small as they were in comparison. From this distance, Pix and Jaz guessed that the monster stood four stories tall with a wingspan twice, maybe three times that size, rendering it incomprehensible to the wyverns flying so close to it. They swarmed around the creature, muddling its view as they tried to regain their own bearings—but they were never able to.

The creature reared back in the air and unleashed a noise unlike any the hunters or their wyverns had heard before. It sounded like the combined summer screeches of every insect on the entire Monstrous Continent—shrill, ear-splitting and consciousness-wrecking, overlaid on a deep, primal, guttural bellow that curdled the guts of every hunter who heard it.

It was like hearing two monsters fucking and fighting at the same time, and it knocked the wyverns right out of the sky.

“Earworms!” Jaz cried, as she whipped two of said creature from a jar in her kit and slipped one onto the crest of each ear. The thin, hand-length worm curled its back end around her ear like it was a decoration before plunging its head into the ear canal—fully blocking off sound from the outside, but also filling her head with a strange awareness that only happened in symbiosis with an Earworm.

“That wasn’t just a roar. That was a sonic attack,” Pix exclaimed. The worms in her own ears glowed with each syllable, transmitting the words directly to Jaz’s brain.

“Well, let’s not jump to conclusions,” Jaz said. “Could be in a metal band where he’s from.”

Indeed the creature didn’t look very interested in attacking the buffet it had laid out for itself. Color-coded parachutes blossomed over the wyverns as the hunters came to their senses and triggered them, but the beast ignored the now-immobile flyers. Instead it beat its wings in another massive gust, scattered the parachuting pirates like fallen leaves, and plunged toward the nearest land it could perceive—the dense jungle just outside the bounds of the Harbor.

Jungle that was dense enough to swallow it completely.

The Earworms permitted noise through their selective filter.

Behind the huge skulls that gave the harbor its name, the Khatoyant attendants scurried to pump air through an equivalently massive set of bellows. The bellows rushed air through the chambers of the skulls and blew out a pattern of monster calls like the music of a great, morbid calliope, and now the hunters on the ground scrambled for their kits and mounts.

They all knew the message of that pattern.

“Looks like we found our ‘good posting,’” Jaz grinned, and sprinted off toward the forest.

Chapter 3: The Boss

* * *

Pix was the sort to over-prepare, and today she was glad she had.

She was already in her best armor, a combination of sturdy bone, fireproof Ignifex hide, and random metal pieces she’d found at the thrift shop, all obscured under a blue tabard because otherwise it looked mismatched and stupid. She hadn’t expected to need such armor today, but she’d only just carved the materials necessary to craft the Ignifex bits and wanted to break it in, and easy survey missions were perfect for that. Even so, she’d still brought two full flasks of Darla’s green bitterale and a selection of nut breads meant to counteract various adverse conditions, along with doubles of other standard kit components like jerky and bandaging for small injuries. She’d sharpened her grappler, recalibrated her podlauncher, outfitted her cloak with camouflaging Mantis Gems, and filled several pockets with charges for the centerpiece of her ensemble—her capacitor blade.

It was about half the size of Jaz’s greatsword, but its primary difference was the cylinder at the base of its blade, loaded with a circuit of mysteric capacitors that would unleash a massive shock of whatever glitter magic she’d loaded. Though it wasn’t as impressive as Jaz’s weapon, it was still made of quality glistiron, and it was the best capacitor blade she could possibly build at this point.

For someone of her experience, it was not a bad kit, but it was still lacking one thing …

“You know, we really should consider hiring some Khatoyants if you’re going to go barreling off after colossal undocumented monsters,” Pix said as she and Jaz traipsed through the jungle. “At the very least for the extra eyes. Also, take off your dragon head. We don’t need to be attracting random Nutpidges with a new monster running about.”

Jaz raspberried and yanked at the mask. Her goofy dragon sock pulled away to reveal a head of dark, sporty shoulder-length hair and skin that was much better suited to the high sun of the jungle than Pix’s pasty mayonnaise tone—but then that was why Pix equipped gems cut to deflect sunlight. Jaz, meanwhile, roamed the jungle in what amounted to monsterskin hot pants and whatever other starter pieces looked interesting at the thrift shop, which put her in a mess of bones, leather, and fur that while equally as ridiculous as Pix’s armor, at least had the good fortune to occur in matching shades of red.

“I’ve got too many college loans to be thinking about Khatoyants,” Jaz retorted.

“If we had Khatoyants looking out for us, we’d bring in more loot that would help us pay off our loans faster,” Pix continued. “Not to mention we’d be less likely to die.”

“If I die, my college loan problem is solved.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Does your dragon line regenerate?”

Nearly every native under the Dazzling Skies had dragon blood somewhere in their ancestry, a consequence of the Elder Dragons being one of the first races to fall from the sky when it had opened. They fell asleep soon afterward, but not before fear of their own extinction led them to reproduce with the other original skybornes (after taking the proper form, of course. Back then, the Elder Dragons frequently spent time in simpler forms for the quaint amusement of it).

The dragon line had still nearly died out, as most of the other races had been genetically incompatible, but fortunately for the dragons, there had been one race that wasn’t. Humans, it turned out, were not only genetically compatible with most other skybornes, but would copulate with literally anything if they were bored or curious enough, as long as it talked and had bulges in interesting places. There hadn’t been many humans in the early days, but that hadn’t stopped them from contributing their bipedal build, general resilience—and, some claimed, their species’ innate luck—to the vast majority of the now-native population. Between magical dragon blood and lucky human blood, most natives were well-equipped for the extreme situations under the Dazzling Skies, but different lines bestowed different benefits.

Including the ability to literally not die.

Jaz looked up in rare thought, as if she’d never pondered her dragon line before.

“Come to think of it … I don’t know,” she said. “Does yours regenerate?”

“No. My dragon ancestry is so diluted by this point that the only thing I get out of it is pointy ears.”

Jaz felt the tips of her ears as if she hadn’t been living with them her entire life.

“Damn. My ears are way pointier than yours.”

“My point is,” Pix continued, “you should figure out whether you’re going to come back before you start making escape plans that end with dying. Besides, if you actually die, your family’s going to come after me.”

“You say that as if we’re not likely to die together.”

“The point is to not die at all.” Pix rolled her eyes for the fifth time in as many minutes.

Really, it was astonishing they’d been partners this long.

They’d met on the mainland at Mysteric University, where an abysmally inaccurate roommate pairing algorithm had placed the level-headed, academically-minded Pix with … well, all that was Jaz.

Pix had A Plan. She was going to study Monstrous Ecology with the express intent of researching the monsters and biomes across the Dazzling Seas. Simple.

Jaz had No Plan. She majored in something random because her interests changed every semester anyway, and when she found out Pix was heading to the Monstrous Continent, she figured she’d come too because why not?

Jaz was from an elite family on the mainland who didn’t think well of her becoming a monster hunter when they’d planned for her to join her sisters in the family business. Monsters on the mainland had evolved differently than those of the Monstrous Continent. The fauna here had been roaming without significant civilized influence for centuries. “Monsters” on the mainland, if one could even call them that, had developed alongside advancing society, and these days the two existed in a close, symbiotic relationship.

Where the Monstrous Continent was largely wild and unsettled, the Wondrous Continent had few unexplored corners. Over the centuries, people and their companion monsters had sewn an eclectic blanket of civilization over the land, from the garden of parks and pastel cottages that made up Indigo Town, to the blue-green sprawl of roots, treehouses, and seafront that was Mangrove Beach, to the glowing metropolis of jewel-toned skyscapers that made up Opal City—at the heart of which beat Mysteric University, the headquarters of all monster-related research. The natives and skybornes had worked together to conceive it, of course, but it was all facilitated by the unique powers of the monsters themselves, such that they were inseparable from its success.

Those mainland monsters still needed ways to expend their excess mysteric energy, though, and over the years Jaz’s family had built a sporting empire out of that basic need. Team Red was one of several champion franchises, and Jaz was supposed to be one of her family’s monster-training champions.

Problem was, Jaz was absolute dung at anything that involved strategy. Her family had sent her to college hoping she’d develop some skills that would be useful on the sidelines, but she was dung at anything that involved structure, too.

She wore her family name like a straitjacket. And when Pix told her about her plans for the Monstrous Continent, that straitjacket broke.

Some people were not meant to live in organized societies.

Jaspartina Red was one of those people.

She thrived on the unpredictable energy of chaos, and that made her perfectly suited to this world.

Of course, it also meant she regularly brought chaos with her, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Extreme circumstances often led to extreme discoveries, after all, and though Jaz was unbridled, she wasn’t careless. Not completely.

That was what kept Pix with her.

For though Jaz brought her own breed of trouble, she was the kind of person who would merrily go to the Hellpits and back for her friends and somehow bring some demonfey home for drinks afterward so they had drinking buddies for the next time they ended up in said Hellpits.

And a person who could turn demonfey into friends was a truly useful one indeed.

Pix was fairly certain Jaz was after this new monster specifically so she could befriend it.

But even that wasn’t was entirely inconvenient.

As they walked, Pix opened her logbook to a clean page in the back and marked it for future use. The pattern bellowed on the harbor’s Skull Organ was clear: observation only, unless the need for a hunt became obvious. After all, in cases like this, there was always a chance that the monster was not innately aggressive, but rather just scared and alarmed at suddenly being in a strange new world. They could decide whether it was truly dangerous after they knew a bit more about it.

Jaz, in front, crouched to examine a set of indentations in the soil: four digits radiated out from the central metacarpal pad like sunbeams cresting the horizon, ending in sharp, deep claw marks.

“Ignifex on the field,” she reported. “The print’s still sharp around the edges, so it’s pretty fresh.”

“Ugh, we so don’t need to deal with an Ignifex today,” Pix sighed, as Jaz put her face to the track and sniffed.

“Smells like he’s amped up his mucus production, too,” she continued. “He’s agitated.”

“We need an agitated Ignifex even less,” Pix groaned.

“Or we could be lucky this new thing wandered into Ignifex territory,” Jaz replied. “Maybe it’s weak to fire and general whompings.”

“When have we ever been that lucky—oh, dung!” Pix exclaimed, for just as she said the operative word, a warbling belch of a roar split the air, and a massive, sinuous shape reared from the shadows.

Or rather, plopped from the shadows. But with an Ignifex, even a plop was the stuff of nightmares and a sudden need for fresh pants.

The Ignifex was most simply described as a salamander, if a salamander was fifteen feet long with muscular, tensile legs that could launch it an equal length; a ripped, red chunky body that could slam nearly any creature into submission with a single blow; and a goofy, goggle-eyed face with a swollen neck-pouch that made one question whether this monster had put on the right head when it left to go to prowl that morning. As if that wasn’t enough, its entire body shone with a thick reddish mucus—and the source of many of the rainforest’s woes. For when the Ignifex felt truly threatened, it clicked a hard plate at the front of its mouth ...

“Don’t let it click!” Pix screeched, and with one fluid, instinctive motion, both hunters snatched their weapons from their holsters—Jaz her beloved greatsword, and Pix her nearly-as-beloved capacitor blade.

Unfortunately, caught off guard and within a foot of the monster’s death plop, they were in no position to stop it.

The monster clacked its bony beak. A tiny spark spat from its mouth—and then flashed across its entire body in an enormous whoomph! of flame.

Jaz and Pix threw their blades up as shields, but that didn’t stop odd flecks of flaming mucus from splattering off the creature and onto their armor. Pix didn’t worry; her Ignifex hide pieces were naturally resistant to the mucus flame. Jaz was not so lucky. She still wore her novice leathers because they were comfy and broken in, and only that—but then Jaz had once cooked a corn dog with her bare hand on a dare and came away with exactly one blister, so fire didn’t matter to her dragon line as much as it did to Pix’s.

Both leapt to keep their distance as the Ignifex lunged and rolled, scattering its mucus flames around the underbrush and igniting everything it touched.

But less and less as the minutes passed.

An Ignifex never burned for more than a few minutes. Usually that was all the time it needed to scare off a threat—as long as that threat wasn’t a hunter hoping to cull the population. Ignifex was considered the apex predator of the area closest to Skull Harbor. Thus far lacking a natural predator and prone to setting the forest on fire, it was one of the few monsters actively culled as a genuine threat to the ecosystem—not to mention a source of useful resources and a fair test of a young hunter’s skill.

It took a fairly experienced hunter to bring one down.

Pix and Jaz were just barely experienced enough.

With another irritated warble-roar, the Ignifex rolled off the last of its defensive mucus, and Pix saw her moment. She queued up a glitterblue capacitor—Ignifex hated the chills that water magic unleashed on the body—while Jaz just wound up to chop the heck out of whatever part her blade hit. Her opal would do the rest of the work for her.

They both watched for the Ignifex’s tells—a grunt, a roll, a bumbling crouch. They weren’t fast monsters. In fact, they were rather clumsy, but very often that clumsiness caused them to bumble into a single good hit—and with its fearsome girth, one hit was all an Ignifex needed.

There came the crouch!

The monster sprang for Pix. She jumped out of the way, just in time for Jaz to swing her sword into the creature’s head in a spray of magical blue sparkles.

So the opal chose water magic, too, Pix observed. It didn’t kill the creature—Ignifex skulls were dense, and made fantastic shoulder pauldrons, for that matter—but the heavy impact did addle the beast enough for Pix to leap onto its back and plunge her blade into the red gems that grew along its spine. She squeezed the first trigger branching over her hilt, and at once the cylinder glowed with a great, blinding crack. When the charge was at its brightest, she squeezed the second trigger. The central chamber of her blade radiated pure, glittering blue; a cloud of sparkling magic particles blasted out from the wound, and the Ignifex screeched as if it had just gotten brain freeze all over its body.

“Pix, look out!” Jaz shouted, but Pix knew what she was yelling for. Before she could pull out the blade, the Ignifex rolled.

Everyone knew to look out for that sort of move. The Ignifex liked to lure enemies close with the promise of an easy blow, only to turn their proximity against them with a lazy, vicious belly flop.

But knowing it was coming and successfully avoiding it were two completely separate things. Especially when one’s foot was planted on a weakened piece of gem.

The Ignifex lurched, and the crumbling gem on its back shattered under Pix’s heel. But she was Pix, and as such, she was prepared for this, too.

She twisted midair, jammed the point of her capacitor blade into the ground, and then pulled her final, special trigger. Her blade split down the middle, revealing a glowing spellglass rod, from which exploded a blinding beam of blue light.

It wasted one of her charges, but it also blew her backward, out of the Ignifex’s reach, and she landed and slid to a solid, practiced stop.

She’d discovered that move completely by accident in her first week of hunting, then practiced it over months at the training grounds, and as excessive as it was, it had come in handy more than once.

The Ignifex paused at the end of its roll, confused that it hadn’t felt a satisfying, crunchy squish, and now its goggled eyes looked in Pix’s general direction as if reconsidering the life choices that led it to attack this clever creature.

Can we get it to run? Pix wondered.

Or would have wondered, if she hadn’t been interrupted by a brain-shattering screech.

Protected by their Earworms, she and Jaz didn’t hear its full terror, but the Ignifex did, and it yowled as if the sound had reached straight into its little walnut brain and pureed it into a nice, smooth spread that would go well on some toasted brown bread.

Pix rolled out of the Ignifex’s path and rejoined Jaz, just as another shadow descended over the trees—and sent a sharp, barbed whip of an arm straight through the Ignifex’s skull.

The Ignifex didn’t even cry out. It crumpled like a sad pile of rejected sausage meat, the apex predator of the Skull Harbor Jungle reduced to nothing with a single snik!

“Told you it wasn’t a vegetarian,” Jaz whispered through her Earworms.

“All the more reason to hide!” Pix spat.

At that, the two hunters scrambled for cover. Even someone as freewheeling as Jaz knew, scared or not, a creature that could take out an Ignifex with one blow was serious business.

Both snatched their cloaks from their kits and flung them over their heads as they waited for it to land, better to obscure themselves for observation and to increase their likelihood of not joining the new monster’s kebab.

Pix had mostly equipped Mantis Gems because she had a ton of them and didn’t own any of the really good defensive gems yet, but of all the things she was glad to have packed today, she was particularly glad for these. Most cloaks were at least minimally good for hiding, but once she fastened the two gems in her neck clasp together, her entire image wavered until the details of her form were obscured, as if in a heat haze. No lapidary had yet found a cut that could render full camouflage from a Mantis Gem, but this was good enough to fool most monster eyes.

Now safely hidden, Pix nestled behind a large fern and opened her book to her marked page, ready to record once the monster landed.

But it didn’t.

In fact the next time they heard it screech, it was deeper into the jungle and far enough away that it must have forgotten its kill nearly as soon as it was made.

“It’s not killing for food,” Pix said.

“And that was no accident,” Jaz echoed, separating the gems on her own neck clasp. “You can’t spear an Ignifex’s brain by accident.”

Pix nodded, and then pulled a little flare gun from her kit and fired three red bursts into the air. Soon after, the resonant notes of the Harbor’s Skull Organ blared out over the jungle, the new tune relaying new orders: This monster is dangerous. Initiate hunt.

“We need to research it before we even have a chance of bringing it down,” Pix said, standing and returning her items to her kit. “Wait—what are you doing?”

“Getting my pauldron,” Jaz replied. She’d brought out her carving knife and had begun to slice through the monster’s skin with a practiced hand that had done so many times before. “No point in letting this big boy go to waste. Plus I’m sure we’ll be able to find a fire station that’ll buy the fireproof leather off us. Not to mention all the stuff we can use the fat for.”

“We don’t have time!” Pix objected.

“You want to leave him for the Waspas?” Jaz retorted.

“You know, if we had Khatoyants, they could do the carving for us while we continued the hunt.”

Another screech went up in the distance. Likely another meaningless kill.

“Fine,” Jaz huffed, then put away her carving knife and unrolled a little red flag from her pack, sewn with the insignia of the Dragon Pig Pirates. She tied it around one of the dead monster’s horns, then rigged a small trap of stink bombs so that anyone who moved it would get a malodorous surprise.

Trap set, she stood back to admire her work with a smug smile.

Pix rolled her eyes, and the two set off.

The screeching creature never landed, but despite the lack of tracks, it wasn’t hard to follow. Persistent screeches aside, it left a trail of punctured corpses, mostly Ignifex, all dead by no effort at all.

The latest hung from a mess of thick vines as if caught there mid-leap and showed no signs of struggle, just a single bloody jab through the skull and a more-goggled-than-usual face frozen dead, mid-confusion.

“It’s only killing apex predators,” Pix said. “Could be asserting dominance.”

“Ugh. What’s it going to do when it figures out we’re the actual apex predators?” Jaz groaned.

Pix didn’t want to think about that.

“All the more reason to pursue it,” she said. She tried to sound bold, but the truth was, she didn’t want to think about what would happen when they caught up with it, either.

There were already dangerous monsters in this world, of course—and she and Jaz hadn’t even faced most of them yet—but inevitably someone had, and there were always veteran hunters who had hunted native monsters so frequently they found even the mysterious eldritch variants predictable.

But skyborne monsters like this one, with no connection to this natural world ...

Not even a legendary hunter like the Madmiral would know where to start.

Hunters like Pix and Jaz, though, could bring her the information to help get her started, and so they pressed on.

They were in the midst of surveying the latest Ignifex corpse when another screech dropped the very bugs from the thick forest air, shuddered the motes wafting through the canopy sunbeams, and even rattled the Earworms in their perches.

They were close.

And it wasn’t the only noise they heard.

The screech was immediately followed by a loud, guttural bellow that made the typical Ignifex roar sound like a kitten’s mew, and a great earth-shattering crash that could only be produced by a truly giant and pissed-off salamander. From behind the nearby tree cover, an apocalyptic plume of flame exploded up through the canopy.

“Oh, dung,” Pix cursed, for she knew exactly what that was.

It wouldn’t matter if they tracked invisibly now, for the two fighting monsters would have ample distraction between themselves. Pix and Jaz sprinted through the forest toward the noise and finally came to a great, sunny clearing and a massive clash of horns, whips, claws and flames.

They dove behind a freshly thrashed-over boulder right as another spurt of flame blasted in its direction. How the flame missed its target, they had no idea. The skyborne monster was big enough that a small band of hunters could spread a picnic between its shoulders with a little extra room for frisbee—extreme frisbee if they played down the length of its spine, and though a whole floor shorter in height, the monster it had challenged was more than comparable in girth and ferocity.

“Dang, it’s already fighting with the Boss!” Jaz exclaimed.

Every hunter in Skull Harbor knew this monster.

He towered thirty feet high and thirty feet long, the gems on his spine cracked and ragged with battle damage, his brimstone-speckled skin crossed with ferocious scars, none of them new. His claws belied his age, long and serrated with abuse, and the great full expanse of his quadruple neck pouches and ever-full belly suggested a monster who never had difficulty finding enough to eat.

Even more telling, though, was the incredible protrusion of his skull, so thick with bony armor that even the screecher’s barbs had not been able to penetrate it. They hadn’t even nicked it.

And now it was facing an opponent that was not only giant, pissed off, and on fire, but also hella deaf in its advanced age—and thus impervious to the monster’s screeches.

No one had hunted the Boss Ignifex in decades, possibly longer. He was a legend in his own right, a creature who’d been tough and mean enough to survive generations of hunters and reach new heights of evolution that other Ignifex didn’t have the brains to imagine. He had the confident, powerful demeanor of a creature who’d consider making you an offer you couldn’t refuse, but then just decide to eat you because it was easier than going through all that trouble.

At the best of times, the Boss Ignifex gave precisely zero fucks for anything that crossed its path.

And this was certainly not the best of times.

The Boss Ignifex glared beadily from within the flames of its own body, settled slowly into a low, defensive stance—

—and then it leapt.

Its great crashing plop of a landing sent a near-seismic wave of force rippling along the ground. The tremor shifted Pix and Jaz’s hiding boulder again as if it were no more than a lump of meat bobbing in a thick stew, and they scrambled to escape its roll. As they did, the Boss’ blow missed its target; they saw the screecher take to the air. Its whips flailed down to the Ignifex but did no good. The Boss’ dorsal hide was too bony and too gemmy. The screecher quickly decided that it would have to attack from underneath, and the plump, flattened roll of the Ignifex’s belly made its vulnerability clear. It was all flesh, perfect for puncturing.

The screecher plunged to the ground, dove low, and shot a whip straight for the Ignifex’s obvious belly. It pierced in, but not as deeply as the monster had likely intended. For though the Boss’ belly was fleshy, it was also thickly calloused from decades of dragging across the rough jungle ground. The Ignifex batted the barb out like it was no more than a pesky thorn, and then glared back out at the screecher as if to ask, “When you gonna start fighting, you lil’ punk ass bitch?”

That gave the screecher pause—which, in turn, gave Pix and Jaz their first good look at the monster. The creature landed out of reach of the Boss Ignifex’s lethal plop, its wings angled for emergency takeoff, its head perked in observation, and Pix used the respite to start sketching in her book.

The creature looked like it had been created by a seven-year-old who’d started drawing a dragon, but halfway through decided to change it to the most badass bug she could imagine. Its lithe six-legged body moved under a thick, black sheen of chitinous armor, which peaked at the end of a long, equally armored neck in a proud warrior’s helmet of horns and jaws. This seven-year-old must have had a particular thing for beetles because its head looked like she’d gone through a book of the fiercest-looking scarabs and drawn all their neatest parts until she ran out of head. At which point she started placing the antler-like horns along its spine, shoulders, haunches, and every other unadorned joint, and finally topped it off with a pair of manta ray-like stingers just because, which flowed out from the base of its neck like a deadly scarf because why not?

“Have you ever seen a bug like that?” Pix trembled.

“Technically it might be an arachnid,” Jaz said. “If we’re counting the stingers as legs. Doesn’t have antennae, either.”

Pix looked up from her logbook to glare.

“What? I gotta get some use out of that entomology degree,” Jaz retorted, but then paused to consider. “Which … is actually a moot point because, no, I’ve never seen a creature like that. Bug, arachnid, or otherwise.”

“Wonderful,” Pix sighed.

“That just means it’s going to make a badass set of armor,” Jaz replied.

“Someone’s gotta beat it first.”

As if on cue, someone decided to try.

With a war cry to rival the Ignifex’s roar, a cluster of twenty hunters barreled out of the forest, some heavily armored, some in patchwork sets that looked like they’d been put together during a hangover, some in ostentatiously scanty sets involving little more than underwear or gossamer robes that must have been assembled on a dare—but all of them buff and swinging an assortment of compensatorily-sized greatswords, hammers, war axes, and one inexplicable oversized bagpipe.

The Frat Men had all met in a fraternity at the Mysteric University, and though they’d left the frat, the frat had very much not left them.

“KALO KYNIGI!” they belted—their frat call, and simultaneously their war cry and an old invocation for a successful hunt. The bagpipe waved through the air like it belonged to a marching band musician who’d actually wanted to join the color guard, let out a dramatic series of sickly-sounding squonks, and then the crowd swarmed the monster’s feet.

Their strategy for this monster, as with most monsters, basically came down to “just hit it a lot.” Granted, for heavy damage dealers, this was usually sufficient, but as Pix and Jaz watched, they realized again that this monster was far from the usual, for twenty greatswords, hammers, war axes, and a bagpipe were bashing its tarsals, and it hadn’t even looked down.

“Are they using debuffs at all?” Jaz squinted.

Pix pulled her goggles down from her forehead and adjusted the magnification. Every now and then she saw a puff of color burst from within the swarm.

“Glitterwhite pods,” she replied.

“Ah, makes sense,” Jaz said. “Bug or lizard, it’s going to hate extreme cold.”

“The cold can’t affect it if it can’t get through, though, and they haven’t even cracked that exoskeleton. I don’t think it’s even noticed them yet.”

Suddenly Jaz took off her pack.

“I have an idea. Who else is out here?”

“Let me see.” Pix focused her goggles on the forest surrounding the clearing. It took some looking, but she knew what she was looking for, and soon she spotted their allies. All were hidden under Mantis Cloaks, but she recognized the faces and weapons peeking from the shadows of the camouflage.

“The Master Trainers,” she reported. “The Bone Pickers. The Ebon Destiny. The Obsidian Destiny. The Shadow Destiny.”

“Ugh. Anyone who’s less of a noob than us?” Jaz groaned. She hadn’t actually encountered any of those groups before, but you could always recognize the new, useless ones from their epic-sounding, dark destiny-obsessed names.

Pix readjusted her goggles and looked harder.

“The Waspas.”

“DUNG.”

“The Booty Lords.”

“Better.”

“The Fashion Hunters. The Apple Enthusiasts. The Generic Researchers.”

“Any mysteric specialists? Bug hunters?”

“Got both in one! The Buggers!” Pix shouted.

“Okay, but who is it?” Jaz inquired.

“No, that’s their name,” Pix elaborated. “They specialize in bug monsters.”

“Do they look like they have any—”

“Oh, look!” Pix interrupted.

For another hunter had stepped into the clearing.

She could have been an honorary member of the Frat Men, had she not predated them by decades and in fact been one of the pivotal founders of Skull Harbor. Her bare arms bulged with muscle corded from years upon years of monster hunting. Her wizened eyes glared from a face that had stared down an Eldritch Stellaric Titan and now wore its skin as a bombastic set of leather armor. She hadn’t come out of that battle completely unscathed—one reality-ripping attack had blown her hair into a cascade of spikes and it had never really rested after that, but as far as she was concerned, that was a small price to pay for the crowning jewel of the whole assemblage—her own Stellaric Opal, implanted directly into her chest because she didn’t carry a weapon.

A hunter like the Madmiral didn’t need to.

All she had to do was inhale.

The Opal in her chest began to glow with the glittering colors of every universe known and unknown, and the illumination grew like the light of a new star being born.

She opened her mouth, and a beam of incomprehensible brightness exploded out. It illuminated the clearing with a searing, reality-splitting brilliance. Jaz’s eyes screamed from the pain of the light and yet starved to stare into its depths, into the leagues and stars and worlds that seemed to gaze back across the chasm the woman had opened with her incredible power.

And then it was gone, its only remnant an undulating ripple of light that shimmered along the monster’s armor.

The screecher noticed that!

“Well, dung. Looks like it absorbs mysteric attacks,” the Madmiral observed. Her Earworms carried the words to every hunter in the area.

“I have an idea!” Jaz shot back over the Earworms, then snatched a small pouch from her pack and made to run for the fray.

Pix snatched her wrist before she could.

“What kind of idea?”

“The only one left,” Jas responded. “You stay here and collect data. I’ll give you something to collect.”

Pix stared blankly as her partner sprinted for the field, toward a monster that not even the Madmiral’s stellaric beam could touch. She glanced at the Boss Ignifex, still on fire itself and peering out at the scene as if thinking a combination of “The heck? I thought this was my fight!” and “OH HELL NAW, I didn’t sign up for an Eldritch Titan.”

For if the screecher could stand up to a stellaric beam, then that was exactly what kind of monster it was.

Which was why the Boss Ignifex promptly decided to snuff its flames out and nope right on out of there.

Pix couldn’t blame it.

“Buggers, listen up!” she heard Jaz project to the hunters, and then Jaz relayed her plan.

“Sounds good! I’ll hand it to you!” the Madmiral replied, like a teacher handing a student a test.

The Madmiral might have been legendary, but in her wizened age her value was less in her capacity for brute force, more in her knowledge and willingness to pass it on. If she could one-shot a dangerous monster for the safety of Skull Harbor, she would, but in situations like this, she was more useful as an observer who could make sense of the chaos afterward and make a plan for the future.

She retreated into the forest to find a good spot for observation.

As she did, a small wave of camouflage began to move out from the treeline, and Jaz sprinted out with it.

Under the distraction of the Frat Men and the retreating Madmiral, Jaz skirted the monster and then scaled her way up the horny protrusions of one leg, up to its back. She landed between its shoulders, at the thick bases of those barbed whips. If she could take those out, she’d take out the only part the monster had attacked with thus far. First, though, she had to get through that armor.

Fortunately, that was her plan.

Before the monster could realize she was there, she opened the pouch she’d brought and smashed the full contents at the base of one of the whips. A sickly-sweet, decomposing smell began to waft up from the resulting puddle.

That was a preview of Monster Punk Horizon. To read the rest purchase the book.

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