City of Greed

Prologue

The Hunter

The Hunter's quarry drew near. Chadwick's incessant chittering as he flitted from branch to branch had grown in volume and intensity over the last couple of hours. The squirrel couldn't communicate in the human tongue, but after their many years together, it didn't need to. The Hunter could understand his animal companion better than his fellow humans, save for a special few. The squirrel's mannerisms had become second nature to the Hunter. A violent twitch of the tail to the left indicated frustration, while a twitch to the right meant nervousness. However, if Chadwick ran through the fluffy patch of hairs between his ears like he was grooming himself, it meant unbridled excitement. As the Hunter followed a series of broken branches, fallen leaves in hues of orange and gold, and the periodic, partial indentation of a minor, clawed footprint in soft earth, the frequency of Chadwick's self-grooming steadily increased. When the Hunter was about to lose the trail, the squirrel would bound ahead of him until it found the next sign of their quarry and wait perched on a branch until the Hunter caught up.

Their pursuit was a welcome distraction from what was troubling him. The Hunter had been patrolling these woods for the better part of four years, and it had never felt so devoid of life. A healthy forest was a melodious cacophony of different forms of life, all competing or cooperating for their survival. The Hunter heard nothing except the stream-of-consciousness chittering of Chadwick and the occasional falcon shriek in the distance. The beating of his own heart sounded deafening in the silence. His heart seemed to beat so loudly that he was not confident he would have sensed a predator approaching him.

Steel yourself. The forest can sense your panic, he thought to himself. It was in his father's voice.

An angry, calm settled over the Hunter. It was a feeling that should not be possible, but it was one he was all too familiar with when it came to thoughts of his father. The man had been cruel and brilliant in equal measure. He had been primarily responsible for the man the Hunter had become, and on the days he didn't hate himself, he was thankful. But, on the other days, he couldn't help but feel resentment toward the man who had deposited him and his sister in the wilderness for weeks at a time during their summer vacation. The man who had eventually abandoned his family and had made The Hunter leave the same family in pursuit. The Hunter had long since given up any hope of finding his father, but returning home no longer felt like an option. The forests of The Land Between the Lakes were his home now, and something wasn't right with his home.

It all started with a burgeoning increase in the mosquito population. If that had been all, the Hunter might not have noticed anything, but trees had started dying more frequently. When the Hunter cut open a newly deceased tree, termites spilled out of the wound. So the Hunter decided to check on the forest's largest consumer of pests, goblins. Under normal circumstances, the Hunter knew better than to disturb the tunnel dwellers, but the thought of goblins turning their attention to prey of a different variety was unacceptable. The Land Between The Lakes had a delicate balance, and he couldn't let a disturbance of this magnitude lie.

The Hunter had waited at the entrance to the nearest goblin tunnel for one day and one night with no sign of activity. Goblins were a hive-like society most closely resembling that of ants, and it was unnatural that not even a single goblin of the worker-caste had not emerged from the tunnel to go foraging. The Hunter examined the tunnel mouth and could not find any sign of activity as recent as the last week. Nothing larger than a child of five or six would be able to enter the tunnel, so the Hunter sent in Chadwick to investigate further. He didn't worry for the squirrel's safety because all animals of the forest knew to steer clear of Hunter's companion. Chadwick and the Hunter reconvened at the next nearest tunnel entrance, confirming what he had already feared. The goblins had left. All of them.