In a lonely cabin just to the north of the four-house “town” of Wiscasset, Pandora readied for her greatest challenge to-date. She had seen it before, from the top of a tower; the dreadlord Apis had constructed another of his hives, and she was bound to purge it from the landscape before his affront to nature unbalanced the mana flowing through the forests.
This was a ceremonial duty of the protectors of the woods who had been appearing to her in her dreams, and so it required ceremonial garb. Girding herself for battle, she nonetheless made a few exceptions to her armaments. Ranger she may surely be, but no enchanted sword had she. Explosive shotgun rounds would have to be magical enough. Apis was never a pushover when he had arisen in the past.
She was confident. She was skilled, and her magic was strong. If the tide turned against her, she could always just trigger her gate device and flee to fight another day. This would be her trial, to see if she was truly worthy to name herself Ranger of the wasteland. As she approached the hive from the northeast, she ran across a small pack of hellspawn, feasting on the corpses of their victims. Brandishing her blade with a ferocious yell, she engaged the demons at a run.
After making short work of the vile creatures, she continued on to her ultimate destination. She emerged from the woods to a vicious droning noise, the trademark of Apis’s chosen. Their stingers thrashed and lashed at her as she cleaved her way through the hive, but could find no purchase, no chink in Pandora’s armor, though her stinger surely found plenty in theirs as the sword flashed again and again, each time felling another minion of the dreadlord.
The creatures grew ever more aggressive as she approached the hive’s center, where Apis awaited just as he had so many times before.
Turning the corner, she spotted him just in time, lurking in the shadows of a waxen archway into the heart of the hive. As he leaped for her, to rend her flesh with his vile claws, she rounded on him, leveled her shotgun, and let loose with a barrage of power and flame. The rounds were much more explosive than Pandora had expected, but thankfully her armor’s steel held as true as that of her heart and deflected most of the carnage. The dreadlord, however, fared not quite so luckily.
As the dreadlord staggered from the damage, Pandora dropped the shotgun and her blade whistled through the air one last time, to strike true in the bastard’s black heart. Moving swiftly, she carved out the spoilable parts and threw his carcass into the Battle Cart. The ceremony had one final task, but for now she was free to collect the mystic honey that would keep her safe during her upcoming transmogrifications.
Upon return to the cabin, the successful Ranger stretched the body of her fallen foe out on a rack, carving it swiftly and deftly. The sun rose on the final day of Spring to Pandora, newest Ranger of the wasteland, slowly roasting and devouring the body of the dreadlord Apis’s latest avatar, monument to the inescapable march of nature’s swift talon. In the end, all is but food, energy for the cycle of mana in the natural world.
