Callisto

Sandtrap

The tiny feathered thing danced just above the nocked arrow and beneath the rising sun of a new day. It was a curious creature: built like a bird but with the head of a small feline (perhaps a cat, judging by its penchant for licking its paws and brushing its ears). The desert winds that wound their way through the tremendous grey trees of the Iron Forest howled in her face as Rain-Born drew the arrow back further and felt the tension in her right arm. She closed her eyes, breathed, and loosed the shaft.

Squawk!

The tiny creature took flight as the arrow slammed itself against the cylindrical structure it was perched on. Rain-Bow opened her eyes to behold failure and pain as her shoulder ached with the effort of her fruitless archery practice. She would undoubtedly feel the curse of The Chainman's bullet for a long time. Her aim was no longer true.

She shuffled back through the dunes that lay like a blanket of warm sleet upon the floor of the Iron Forest, surrounded by what Rain-Born was convinced were not trees at all but caskets. Inside some of them, they had found the skeletal or charred remains of those of the Old World who had burned with the rest of their civilization. They had constructed these great columns to challenge the sun itself in their hubris, and now they served as nothing more than their tombs.

Stepping through the smashed ground-floor window of one of these buildings, she entered the place where they had made camp. She had noticed that the darkened interior of these buildings was never of uniform design like the houses in the suburb. This one heralded a long table with several broken rectangular machines similar to the "TV" that Jespar had shown her but smaller and arranged along many small cubicles at regular intervals. Some of these desks still had their occupants sitting, hunched over these devices, their bony fingers ready to press the strange keys attached to the technological marvels they had toiled away on for most of their numb, dreary lives. Their hollowed-out eyes, bashed skulls, and decayed, jawless mouths seemed to Rain-Born to be a fitting destiny for those who had tried to understand everything until nothing was left to understand.

Jespar sat pensively under one cubicle. He had been quiet for quite some time and mainly engaged himself with pawing at the keys under each monitor he could find, trying desperately to find one that functioned. He had given up, just like she had.

"My aim falters, Jespar," she said as she sat beside him. "It will be some time before I can hunt again."

He yawned as though still in mid-sleep. "Practice makes perfect."

She wiped the sweat that had begun to gather from her forehead and cast it away onto the cold iron floor. It did not feel natural to sit within these old withered monuments. She thought they might come crashing down upon her at any moment.

"We should continue before darkness falls," she said.

"Yeah," was all he replied. "What's the final destination, again?"

She pointed out the window in the general direction of her target, its silvery form shimmering in the baking sun of the afternoon. It would have been the same height as the other buildings of the forest were it not for its long antenna that pierced the heavens – like the feelers of a Canyon Stalker.

"The tallest tower of the Iron Forest," she said. "There, it is said Callisto waits."

He raised an eyebrow unbeknownst to her. "Correct," he whispered.

"What was that, Jespar?"

"Nothing, gal, nothin'," he yawned, and rolled over to get back on his feet, shaking the dust of the building off his fur.

But how do you know? Who told you?

He walked out into the open and felt the blazing fireball of The Deadlands bare down on him again. He briefly regarded the shimmering TV tower at the furthest end of the Dead City she had pointed to. He was actually here, and the shit he'd gone through to get here was worse than he could have imagined. But it was almost over. It was within a paw's reach.