The Shadow of the Sands

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Notes

TW: slight mentions of injury and blood,

mentions of loss of life, vague fighting.

#SPSReview

#FeatureReview

#EWG

Image Credit: Jay jackson

My monster hunter character turned

oc is the focal point of this piece. I

loved her so much.

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Before she was a hunter, before the Guild knew her name, Njeri walked alone. Not out of pride, but because there was no one left to walk beside her.

She was born under the gaze of burning skies and shifting sands, in a sunbleached village at the edge of the Dune Expanse. It was a settlement so small it didn’t even make the Guild’s maps — where sand seeped into homes and the wind carried voices away before they could finish speaking. Life was hard, the kind of hard that left your skin cracked, your voice dry, and your hands calloused before you were old enough to understand why.

But they survived. That was the word everyone used.

Survived.

Her earliest memories were of stories her mother told her in the evenings. Folktales of sand-spirits, monsters that wore the skin of storms, and ancient beasts that swallowed suns. Her father carved pictures into stone with dull knives to go with each new story. He used to say that monsters weren’t evil, they were just hungry and trying to survive too. That the Expanse had rules, and if you listened long enough, it would tell you what they were.

She believed him.

Until the day the earth screamed.

It came just past midday. The wind fell silent, the birds vanished, and the sand turned to liquid beneath their feet as the ground trembled. A Barroth erupted from beneath the dunes in a rage, caked in wet sand and seething with some invisible fury. Homes crumbled like paper under its claws. People ran. Screams were swallowed by the whipping winds.

Njeri’s father acted quickly, shoving her into a nearby grain cellar and barred the hatch. Sinking the child into darkness far below the surface. With each stomp, every movement from the monster, sand found its way into the cracks of the cellar — a grim reminder of its presence, yet a way for the girl to keep track of when the monster was near. She stayed in her spot, curled up on the cellar floor, waiting until there was nothing but silence.

When Njeri emerged the sight was grim…The village was gone, totally destroyed by a beast they stood no chance against.

No survivors but her.

No family.

No stories.

Only silence, and the desert.

She wandered after that, surviving on instinct. Only weighed down by her grief and a small sack in her back. She found other wanderers, people who were also displaced. Learned quickly who to trust, and who to avoid. Learned what monster tracks looked like. Learned how to stay downwind. Learned how to run.

But Njeri wasn’t much for running. She endured.

It was her against the world, or at least the raging beasts that resided there.

As the years ed, the girl became a ghost of the shifting dunes, quiet, sharp-eyed, impossibly stubborn. She traveled between desert settlements, offering protection in exchange for food, water, shelter. Her weapons were nothing more than two broken blades that she had found on her journeys. But she made it work. Her kills weren’t clean, but they were final. She fought like someone who didn’t expect to see tomorrow — and didn’t care.

And slowly, people noticed.

Whispers ed between sand runners and dune merchants of a tall woman with strikingly bright eyes, silent as a dunefox, unflinching even when monsters charged. She never gave her name. Never took payment beyond supplies. Just walked into danger and came back bloodied but breathing.

When the Guild found her, she was tracking a Cephalos nest on her own. They didn’t threaten her. They didn’t offer gold.

They offered her something more valuable; a place and a purpose.

Her first real mission came quickly: a mid-risk escort across the western ravine routes. The cargo was basic; cloth, grain, medicine, but among the merchant party was a child.

The guild g notes were clear: Protect the people, prevent minimal damage to the caravans property. Ensure safe arrival.

The girl, Asha, was eight. Small and quiet, with a habit of staring at people like she was reading something in them. She carried a soft, handmade cat plush, stitched unevenly and missing one button eye.

Njeri didn’t talk to her at first. Didn’t know how.

Yet Asha didn’t seem to mind. She followed her around the camp like another shadow, mimicking the woman’s footsteps in the sand. Sometimes she would sit beside Njeri during gear checks, legs crossed, toy in her lap. They’d sit in silence, nothing but the sound of Njeris blade gliding across a whetstone, the crackling of a low fire.

At first, Njeri was unnerved by the child that followed her like a young aptonoth keeping up with its herd. Most people just let Njeri do her own thing, never bothered her much. Not that Asha was a bother, she never spoke. She would sit in silence, follow in silence. The only thing ever giving her away was the sounds of her movements.

The days continued like this, Asha following the woman even during patrols around the caravan. Luckily everything was quiet and Njeri grew used to the girls presence.

That was until they hit the deepest part of the route, something that signaled that they were half way through. But that the rest of the journey was going to become risky until they exited the ravine.

A Diablos — territorial, wounded, furious. Driven from its nesting ground and desperate. The sand buckled before they even heard its scream. A cart tipped. A beast of burden panicked. People scattered.

Asha was thrown clear.

Njeri didn’t think. She ran into the path of the monster, blades readied, eyes locked on the girl lying motionless in the sand. One charge nearly tore her in two — a horn caught her side and hurled her into a dune. The next cracked her armor and sent her sprawling.

But she got back up.

She always got back up.

She reached Asha just as the Diablos circled back, huffing, its body half-covered in sand and blood. Njeri held the girl, holding the small body tightly against herself- she was going to use her own body as a shield for the monsters oncoming attack.

But somehow the others rallied. A hunter in the rear drew its attention. A ridge collapsed from a blast, throwing dust into the monster’s eyes. The sudden explosion and cracking of sediment revealed another ridge, falling from just above pinning the beast.

When the dust cleared it revealed Njeri hadn’t moved a muscle.

She was still holding on to Asha.

Bleeding.

Breathing.

Injured but alive.

For the first time Njeri was scared of losing something, scared of the possibility of death.