These texts were originally published as part of Hunt's Desolation's Wake, the live Event that ran from March 6th to May 8th, 2024. The excerpts featured here are a continuation of those from Desolation's Wake: Part One. Are they fact, fiction, fable, or fallacy? We may never know for sure, but there's truth to every lie, and a lie to every truth. Read on, and decide for yourself.

Summary: In order to get The Statesman back, Hardin captures The Centipede and holds her hostage. As he and Felis try to come to an agreement from across train tracks about what exactly the law looks like in the bayou, a train of monsters arrives and unleashes chaos on both sides. Ultimately, Felis and Hardin come to an uneasy truce. Meanwhile, in Sofia's quest to get to the bottom of the still-spreading Corruption, she leaves the swamps behind in order to find new answers a thousand miles away, where canyons and mountains await.

CHAPTER EIGHT: SHERIFF HARDIN

Sheriff Hardin tightens his grip on the law—and his gun—to prove his authority is absolute.

Interview transcript, 3/3
Interviewer: Unknown
Interviewee: W. Hardin, Undated

I am nothing if not a man of restraint, so the first idea that struck me was to do nothing.

The Statesman knew what he signed on for, didn't he? Knew from the moment he got swamp muck on his shiny shoes. I'd only need to write a letter to say he perished on the Hunt, and then there'd be one less person to answer to. Hell, if I'd have known how much he was still getting paid, then I very well might have gone through with it.

Instead, I did what I always do: my duty.

This was our opportunity, our test. Us Lawful had spread ourselves across the bayou and held guard in our own stations, but now was the time to gather and demonstrate our worth, time for me to demonstrate my leadership to those who ceded it to me. We were the beginning of a new law, so steel and gunpowder had to test the truth. I had to show that our authority would birth order.

It's true that this test would involve purging unruly citizens from the Earth. Once every green moon, duty and pleasure do happen to mix.

So I investigated. Hard interrogations, not that soft jail-cell-prodding the Governor always called for. When the next train pulled in, we had to have the Statesman in tow, or else the additional arsenal he commissioned was fixing to be forfeit.

+++

CHAPTER NINE: FELIS

The night stills as a hostage is taken and the tides of power begin to shift.

Exodus of the Primals
Recorded verbally, transcriber unknown.

We waited for Centipede's arrival. I sat by the fire while Lonely Howl prowled the perimeter. Ants circled the coals, then broke free to flee south. They carried a mouse rotted down to just its head and spine.

It was a good omen. This is how I knew she'd been successful in securing a great bounty.

"They're coming," Howl barked.

"Be still," I said. "Yap like a cub, and your prey will sense weakness."

Howl quieted, and we heard shadows shuffle across leaves. An owl high in an elm spooked and flew off.

Centipede dragged a man behind her, his hands bound, his head covered with a potato sack. The coarse material was a world away from the fine clothes the man wore. He was a well-dressed devil, or thought of himself as such.

I ripped off the man's hood.

"You'll regret this," he snarled, eyes glancing wildly around our camp. If he was one of us, he'd have bitten off Centipede's thumb. But he wasn't. He was domesticated.

"I'll remember every face in this godforsaken swamp," he went on. "We'll chase you down like foxhounds and stomp your faces into the mud."

"You'll forget this chase soon enough and go back to hunting money," I said. The ants hadn't gone far. I picked up the mouse corpse and placed it by the fire. Its spine curled from the heat. "You call yourselves the Lawful, but you bark like animals. They are barks of fear, not command."

"You're Felis." He spat into the dirt. "I know you. Mark your days carefully. You only have a few free ones left."

"You're not dead yet, but you could be." I rose from the fire and nodded. Centipede pushed the man to his knees. Sweat dripped off his face onto the mouse remains and glistened in the light. "Would you like to know why?"

+++

CHAPTER TEN: FELIS

Wildness shows new paths toward Primality as Felis holds a life at knifepoint.

Exodus of the Primals
Recorded verbally, transcriber unknown.

The Statesman didn't believe us at first. It was only when I had Centipede show him her tattoos that he was able to understand: insane and twisted markings of insects beheading mice, foxes, oxen, men. She had been a Demented follower once, before she was one of us.

When we first found her, Howl and I had followed Hardin's trail and come across a bloodbath, the remains of the Lawful's "order." A single Demented cultist was left breathing in the mess, and we took her.

Centipede had earned her name for her adaptability, the quickness of her strike. She'd made poisons and worked them into bullets for the other Demented. I saw her eyes flicker with instinct. She could do more than follow madfolk chasing false prophecies.

I showed her the wilds. Showed her the beauty in the chase, the kill. Showed her that the Sculptor was just one in a long chain of hunger, that there would one day be something bigger than it, too. All we could do was rise to the top of our own pack.

"So you left me alive to tell me this?" the Statesman asked into the dying fire. "What good will it do you?"

I knifed open a Starshell round. Ants had swarmed back to the rotting mouse, and I poured out a circle of black gunpowder to trap them there.

"We tell you this because you're not a threat," I told him. "You're bait. We honor our bait, respect it. Even you."

I dropped a coal on my trap and the Starshell powder flashed, incinerating the ants and setting the mouse head on fire.

"Bait can be a warning and teach lessons to its kin, if it survives the bite."

+++

CHAPTER ELEVEN: SOFIA

An inquisition throws Primal Hunters into peril as The Death Pact makes a plea.

Addressed to Lulu Bassett
Translated from Spanish
Ink on Blank Train Schedule

When I eventually spoke to Hardin, I was surprised he didn't recognize me despite hunting us before. Perhaps he didn't care about our crimes anymore. We gathered in a cabin raised high above the water. The Lawful had caught three Primals and were interrogating them.

Below us, Rotjaw lumbered.

"This isn't law," the Bone Mason told him. "It's ruthless and unusual."

"Beg your pardon, Ma'am," Hardin said with a tip of his hat. "If I wasn't sworn on this badge, these degenerates would have their hands behind their backs holding nothing but toothpicks. They're filthy kidnappers."

He asked the captured Primals questions about Felis and a stolen Statesman. Each stayed silent and was kicked off into the water with Rotjaw. We tried to get him to stop. Every Pact was needed now, but Hardin couldn't see the bigger threat.

"Do you know what makes us Hunters?" I asked him.

"Sure," he said. "Tracking, staying quiet, but you here just don't see fit to shut up."

"It's the inoculation," Worm Bite said. "That concoction runs through all our blood. Gives us Dark Sight. Do you know who made that shot?"

Hardin fired a shiny new rifle to send Rotjaw into her fit.

"Sure I do. But if it's all the same, I don't care who made the gun I'm holding. I just mind if it puts a hole where I want."

"Finch's blood was strong enough to open the Land of the Dead," Worm Bite continued. "What do you think Lynch could do to us, with all her design flowing in our veins?"

The Sheriff paused at that. “Listen," he said. “You folks want cooperation? Answers and help? Join me in getting the Statesman back, and I'll put you in touch with the people paying out Bounties. I heard they beat Death at poker and got all the secrets of the world in their pockets."

+++

CHAPTER TWELVE: FELIS

A train whistles behind schedule as tensions rise and betrayal hums on iron rails.

Exodus of the Primals
Recorded verbally, transcriber unknown.

We took the Statesman to the rail line.

"Here," I declared as we reached the railway. "Behold the iron scar paved by your money. Behave, or we'll feed you to the steam beast when it comes."

"You promised you'd bring me to the station," the Statesman said. "You can't tell me you don't understand what a train is."

"The way of civilized man is a mystery to us." Iron Bark laughed. "That station smells of you lawmen. They'll leave and come to our woods for you."

We crouched behind old cannons. I found fresh bird droppings on the hot metal, could tell the Lawful scared off mallards and drove them down this way. We wouldn't be flanked.

The train should've been there at high noon.

"They're late," Howl said.

At all once, gunshots crackled from the tree line. Bullets glanced off the rail and hit Iron Bark in the leg. Howl flashed his revolvers in return, turned a white-shirt's kneecaps into crumbles of gravel. Centipede threw a spear and a gurgling cry confirmed that it hit her target's throat. I shot an oil barrel, and smoke caught the south wind, giving us cover.

"Come out, Felis," I heard Hardin call after the gunfire stopped. I peeked out over the rail. The battered Statesman held Centipede at gunpoint, three Hunters dead around her.

"We bought you animals out," the Statesman said, patting Iron Bark on the shoulder. "Turns out money talks more than mouse heads and summoning stones."

Pebbles shook along the track as a whistle shrieked like a shot dove. Guns fired from the train, and railmen fell off to the sides, dead, covered in Hive filth. Iron screeched on iron, and the train stopped.

The blood-smeared freight cars shed dust from crossed deserts, and their doors burst open.

+++

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: FELIS

Bodies are crushed as a threat from a new direction tests the vows of every Pact.

Exodus of the Primals
Recorded verbally, transcriber unknown.

Iron Bark had sold us out to Hardin. They stood side by side. That grave-digging halfwit was at the tree line too. Seemed the Death Pact had saddled in with the lawmen.

"There's deeper evils out there," called Hardin. "Just look at the train. Our problems here have spread."

Two Meatheads crumpled the wall of a freight car and tumbled out. One knocked a cannon onto a lawman, breaking him open. A leech fed on his exposed lung and swelled like a tick embedded in a dog ear.

"Let's compromise," the sheriff went on. "I want to die from old age, not poison and monsters."

"Funny how compromise always involves kissing your ring, Hardin," I said.

"Let us hold Hunters accountable." He waved a pistol in the air. "We can't have more Demented, or another fall to the Sculptor."

"Look at your hostage," I called back. Howl tossed a bundle of dynamite, and the Meathead split like a flower. "The only thing that saved her was the freedom to be wild. To follow her instincts."

"Hunters aren't beyond the law," Hardin shouted, his hand grazing his badge.

"Nature is the law." I ripped a weed from the soil. "I'm taking the train. Will you agree not to shoot?"

"You calling for a truce?" A genuine ask.

I stood, and some Hunter in his union suit showed up late. He stumbled from the trees and shot, maybe even by accident. The rest opened fire in response. I ran, made it to the train as the firefight went on. Howl stoked the engine, pulled me onboard.

"Let's call it more of a head start," I shouted to Hardin, and the brakes unlocked.

+++

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: SHERIFF HARDIN

The security of the benefactors is questioned by Sheriff Hardin as his aim shifts to higher targets.

Letter regarding Bounties, 2/2
Author: W. Hardin
Undated

To Our Stalwart Benefactors (and your many cast shadows):

Never hurts to have scouts on hand, and that's what I designated those Primals after I gave the Statesman his hat back. For now, anyway.

We let the lot of them take the train—it was infected anyway, and I'd prefer a clean ride across the wests of our country.

The Statesman couldn't give a straight answer as to why our Backers would send a train in such condition. Was it a test? Some statement or warning? We agreed that at best, it was a call for aid.

So, aid I'll give, along with the official leave of absence I'm about to offer Louisiana and her mud-slicked shores.

Ten years I've served these parts. Three now under the name Sheriff Hardin. Seen lots in the way of bedlam and betrayal in that time, with my loyalty pointed north, south, east, and west. I never considered doing more than upholding law in New Orleans until now. You'll make a fancy man of me yet.

A new law needs the sacrificing of the old one, so I've been told. Mark my words though, this "truce" won't last. When it expires, I won't need a train supply of firepower to keep it in check.

I'll need an army.

See, we put down vermin here, your honor. But they breathe the same air as we do, and sometimes it's hard to see what side of the fence you sit on. So some get let go—this time. You know what it does to a sheriff to shake the poison-marked hand of a stray, rabid lion? Swallow his pride and betray the law he was sworn to die for?

Neither do I.

+++

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: SOFIA

Sofia senses Death in a new form, in a new wasteland, scrawling new names in stone.

Addressed to Lulu Bassett
Translated from Spanish
Ink on Unmarked Map

This letter I won't give to you. I will keep it on me for now. My words mean nothing if not aimed at you, so I have to put them down like this.

You're asleep in the railcar and the desert passes quickly. Our hands are cold when they touch. It's the coldness of leaving a place. No goodbyes are ever warm, even when they are from a swamp as vile as ours. The bayou will always steam with regret, taste like gunpowder. I think I'll miss it.

We both smell like low tide and rot from the Land of the Dead. Shaking hands with The Drowned has lingered on us. But the bayou is their burden for now. They're the only guardians we could find, but they fit. They've earned it.

Vultures are circling some animal walking across the playa. It's following the trail of some circus caravan.

Dying in the desert is dry and desperate. Death has no passion there. His kisses are cacti and blisters. He's all heat and shimmer, thin as a snake in the distance where sand meets the sky. The Death I made my deal with was different. He was giant, a rotting skeleton who gurgled with the rasping throats of men caught in trees. He was something that lurked in floods and graveyards. That is Death in Louisiana.

I do not know what Death will look like further west, but I've heard rumors. Sunsets paint the canyons and make the rocks bleed. The air is thin, hard to breathe. Things are alive there in a wildness the swamps forgot.

On the other side of these mountains, dying will take a new shape. Its shadow will be the skeleton of you and me, back-to-back, and a thousand gun barrels waiting to sing.

+++

Want more? Experience the world of Hunt: Showdown 1896 on Steam, Xbox, or PlayStation.