When she had first set sail for Onnen, Sawyer had been unable to quell the unwelcome twinge of foreboding. The small island tucked away into a corner-pocket of the world had always been a part of Revaliir which she had glossed over with a combination of bemused curiosity and reluctant ambivalence. The insatiable desire to learn about everything in the vicinity that usually accompanied her while on her hunts (and anywhere else, for that matter) had an inexplicable tendency to snag on a figurative fence when it came to this particular part of the map. While the lonesome piers and the isolated, impassive tribes she had heard so much about would ordinarily leave her hopping at the opportunity to discover whatever was being hidden from her, something seemed to push her away.
Indeed, Sawyer could not quite break free of the shadow cast by the knowledge of the history of Onnen's connection to the gods that was embedded in the age-weathered carapace beneath her feet. The usual voracity with which she took in information around her was here somewhat unbalanced by the ever-looming history between Onnen and divinity, but she knew that once she got over her uneasiness that she would greatly enjoy digging beyond its depths. She was, after all, standing on the back of one of the largest monsters Revaliir has ever known — it was impossible for her to resist. It was like the perfect tourist trap had been set for the woman who sets perfect (if you ask her, anyway) monster traps. Somewhere along this great chitin shell were hidden key pieces of an underground unity being played out between man and monster. These thoughts turned the towering maze of winding streets and buildings and the restless sounds of the beetles around her into a detour that she had no choice but to visit from the moment she had been dropped off at Onnen and told not to make any detours.
Sawyer had responded with a vague kind of surprise upon being assigned the mission (technically speaking, she had been filled with an irrational sense of dread and unsolicited terror upon first hearing about who would be giving her the initial briefing - they were the head of a notorious crime syndicate who didn't like taking no for an answer. Sawyer spent the entire trip to Vilpamolan coming up with hypothetical reasons and misdeeds for which she might be punished, ranging from taking the second-to-last bonbon from the dessert tray to causing the death of a local farmer’s two cows and his second cousin through a series of unfortunate misunderstandings that had been initiated by an innocent remark that last week’s meal at the local tavern had tasted a little off) which was completely understandable. She wasn't usually contacted to take on bounty hunting jobs as her skill set wasn't exactly geared towards finding people - there were enough warriors and barbarians or whatever who could swing around a sword until their arms fell off who could tackle that kind of operation much better than she could. So it wasn't until she was told that the objective of the mission was the live capture of a human target that it started to click why they might've thought that Sawyer could be up to the task.
Nevertheless, Sawyer still had had her misgivings about the task in question, as she always did about human targets. She didn't like taking on missions that involved her having to go up against humans. Something about it didn't feel right.
And yet here she was.
Riding on the back of a giant beetle.
Haggling with a general store manager over the value of fifteen pounds of poison.
The world worked in strange ways.
"Again," she said,
"I need to know how much it would take to incapacitate a large pet." Sawyer raised her hand, palm-down, to be about level with her shoulder. She looked back at the shopkeeper. "A rather person-sized pet." The man behind the counter scowled, folding his arms somewhat crossly.
"And what exactly are you planning on using this for?"
"Safety," she said quickly.
"I'm just thinking of safety. I've got pets at home— Rats. I've got rats at home. I don't want to kill the pet, so how much poison do I use so that it kills rats," she again gestured at the height near her shoulder,
"and not a twenty year-old woman?" Sawyer winced.
"What did you just say?" Quickly backpedalling now,
"A twenty year-old pet?" The shopkeeper was already returning the poisons to a locked cabinet in the shop, gathering several different brightly-labelled and individually-sealed packages into his arms. Sawyer watched with remorseful eyes as the poisons disappeared from sight. "What kind of pet is person-sized and lives for twenty years? I don't buy it."
Sawyer sighed, thinking deeply to herself. She was hoping she wasn't going to have to resort to more benign techniques like peppering the landscape with bait and traps and squatting in every bush from here to Sahel until one of them catches something desirable, but she had a few sessions of information-gathering and tricks up her sleeves, not to mention enough alphanumerical plans left before she got to plan P (which, for posterity, was the aforementioned technique regarding traps and bushes and whatnot) to prevent her from resorting to such benign and desperate measures.
The shopkeeper was already on his way out the door by the time Sawyer snapped back to reality. "I'm informing the authorities of this."
"What? Wait— hold on!" Sawyer nearly vaulted over a stack of construction equipment on her way to seize the man's wrist, keeping him from passing through the door. She stammered, breathless, panic bubbling while she tried to form her words.
"And why should I?" asked the shopkeeper,
"What kind of pet is person-sized and lives for twenty years?" "A tortoise!" came her voice, blurting out the best thing she could think of.
"It's a very large tortoise!" The shopkeeper glared at her.
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She had to find a way to carry all of this poison.
