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The world is vast and deserted and heated by a sweet sweltering crimson star. There's a City that scrapes the sky, lying in a desert valley and burrowing into the sand. There's an Ocean, a week's ride away, misty and dark and guarded by water-slick rocks. And between them is the Wastes--a swath of sand and hot temperatures that parch your throat just thinking about it. And tucked away in these Wastes, behind a mountain, there lies a cabin.
This cabin had laid in its grave half-dead for decades, until a couple arrived--two happy newlyweds, named Gunhilde and Annie. They had planned to live together in domestic bliss at a safe distance from the City that screwed over anyone who dared enter. But there's only so many weeks you can go apart from civilization when you don't grow your own food or spin your own thread.
Gunhilde was no stranger to a sixgun. She'd hop on her bike and ride across the sand in the middle of the night, taking weekly trips to the City to take on odd jobs that were perhaps too far into illegal territory for Annie's liking. Annie never said anything when Gunhilde arrived home long after nightfall, when she found bloodstains on her wife's clothes when doing the laundry, when she hugged Gunhilde from behind at the sink while she rinsed her hands of crusted blood and grit. Their relationship strained silently.
And then one day Annie decided that damn it, she'd had enough.
Annie was not an idiot. She had long since figured out her wife's activities. She knew where Gunhilde kept her sixgun. One day, Annie announced her intentions to strike out on her own to Gunhilde, and she turned on her heel, took her packed bag and her banjo, and walked out the door. Gunhilde followed, insisting on an explanation or perhaps a second chance. Annie pulled out her lover's sixgun.
Gunhilde stayed in the empty cabin, clutching at her bloodied shoulder and staring at the dull walls, for three days before she got herself together and headed into the City.
The City is large enough that it has its own metallic sky curving over the jumbles of buildings, and hundreds of millions of people mill about some hundreds of thousands of levels. It is the place to go if you want to disappear. How are you supposed to find a speck in the eye of the needle hidden in the desert? You don't find it all on your lonesome, as Gunhilde found out when someone thrusted a flask of whiskey at her with a cheeky grin.
Ivain Ray was an interesting character, to say the least. They dressed in tacky clothes that screamed wealth over personal taste, and they were crass even for Gunhilde's standards. They rested a hand on their hip right above their pistol as they walked with Gunhilde around the City, telling her where to avoid and where to go for cheap drink or bullets and where to stay the night (they invariably recommended the joints they ran above all others). And then, of course, there was the fact that they were apparently business partners with one of the most powerful families on the entire fucking planet. Gunhilde didn't believe them until they brought her to the Deorwine Mansion and introduced her to Eloise.
Eloise Deorwine was many things--she was dead, she was rich, she had low enough standards to be working with (and clearly secretly courting) Ivain, and she was a vampire. But she was also kind. She gave Gunhilde a place to stay and an offer of friendship and resources to fund her search for Annie. And so Gunhilde took to her new life of searching through the City's streets with Ivain by day and going to balls with rich socialites by night. (She always ended up in the back corner nursing a glass of whiskey with Eloise's younger brother, Eilos.)
And all was well.
Ivain had a little sister. Her name was Ialde Ray, but she'd get on stage at Ivain's sleazy bars and scream to the crowd that she was Moray and this is Ye Miserable Bastards, before she'd count her band into playing folk music loud enough to hurt the customer's ears. Moray made the mistake of cutting through an alley on her way back to Ivain's joint one night. Gunhilde and Ivain found her body lying in a shadowed corner of the alley the next morning. Her face was frozen somehwere between fear and anger, save for the gunshot wound bleeding between her eye and her nose.
Ivain was crushed. The more they thought of Moray, the more they drank, and the more they drank, the more they brooded, until Eloise finally nipped at their heels enough to get them back on their feet. They crushed their grief into something smaller and angrier and hid it in their heart, and they used it as fuel as they began their own manhunt for her murderer. With the help of Eloise's eyes and ears all over the City, they pinned the crime on a particular rowdy group of punks that fancied themselves a crime syndicate. And, much to Ivain's displeasure, they had previously hired Gunhilde to do some of their dirty work. And she had quite the hefty bounty on her head as a result.
Ivain waltzed into Gunhilde's room the next afternoon with a smile afixed to their face. Gunhilde, darlin', they drawled, would you like to go for a little walk with me? And who was she to refuse one of her fair-weather friends such a request?
The moment they were alone together on the steel street, Ivain drew their sixgun out of their holster.Gunhilde, cowboys ain't known for their loyalty. They're known for their aim. Surely you, of all people, knew that!
Ivain hauled Gunhilde's ass to the nearest police station and turned her in for a pretty little penny--thirty thousand dollars, if you can believe it. They let her rot in jail for a year. Eventually, Eloise got damn tired of Eilos wilting and Ivain brooding. And so she gave Ivain a bag of money and told them to go pay her bail and bring her back. They found her sitting in her cell, her arm cut off and clumsily bandaged. Her wife's last gift to her had been sitting infected in her shoulder for far too long, and the medical staff at the jailhouse weren't keen on spending precious time and money diagnosing and medicating. As a sort of olive branch, Ivain spent an exorbiant amount of money fitting her with a new mechanical arm. She tested it out by beating them to a bloodied pulp. They admitted that they deserved it, the bastard.
And that is where the tale pauses and exhales and asks for a break and a drink. In time it will resume. Maybe someday Gunhilde will find her darling lover Annie playing a banjo in a bar, a mirror of when they first met. Maybe someday Ye Miserable Bastards will get a new lead singer and start touring again. Maybe someday Eilos will get well and stop swanning around. But for now, that is all.
In the meantime, look around at Red Sun's other tales! Interested in the now-bastardized story of how the star performer of a troupe brought her Circus to its burned knees through her delusions? Or the much-beloved ancient legend of the doomed romance between a merfolk and a merfolk hunter? Do not fret! New stories will be added to the website soon!
