Fairwell's Rest had seen quite the boost in activity in the last few days. The run-down amalgamation of self-constructed dwellings ranging from shacks put together from sheets of corrugated metal to the occasional well-laid structure of stone blocks had been a feature of this part of the Badlands for going on thirty years now. What had started as the camp of a travelling merchant company led by one Jackson Fairwell and family had steadily grown as more and more people came together for the relative safety that numbers provided, or the business that could be done there.
A large pocket of water was the main feature of the town, the reason for its establishment. Known locally by the inventive name of 'the watering hole', it was joined by a sturdy wooden tavern of the same name that stood on its shore. The town was a mishmash of buildings that had no real coherence to it, but despite that a vague approximation to streets had been formed by the main thoroughfares that the occupants had traveled along wearing at the dirt.
The population of the town had never been particularly large. People came and went, a healthy business of travelers passing by to purchase supplies and bedding. But earlier that week that had changed. A large group of settlers had come upon Fairwell's Rest, men women and children from another world, come to seek ... well, if not fortune, a life of some kind amidst Hera Prime's trials. They were all sorts, from ne'er-do-wells to political refugees to entrepreneurs who saw opportunity, all shared in two things. Nationality, and the desire to start afresh.
They made the locals uneasy. Such a large group of those with common background and a - if at times uneasy - standing unification coming upon their settlement with the intent to expand it threatened to upset the semblance of balance that had kept the town going for all its years. But the new arrivals came with tools, materials, supplies and technology. The unease was overlooked, for the time being, for the benefits that they brought.
Unfortunately for Fairwell's Rest, the arrival of these well equipped settlers had not gone unnoticed.
When the first warning alarms went off, the new settlers didn't know what was happening. The locals fled into their homes or out of the town entirely. Stalls were closed and merchandise hastily stowed away, what few vehicles the townspeople owned were shifted into gear and driven off. Basement trapdoors were uncovered from beneath rugs or crates and families disappeared into them, dragging what they could over the entrances as they descended.
Warily, the settlers had taken up their guns, gathered about the beginnings of their homes that were being built. Most of them, anyway. Some of them had the sense to follow the locals' lead and find a place to hide.
The Letoa Sirens were coming to town, and the newcomers were about to learn exactly why the citizens of Fairwell's Rest scattered like leaves in the wind at the word of their arrival.
Bodies littered the streets of Fairwell's Rest as Ali'tasi surveyed the damage with grim satisfaction. The intricate array of crimson tattoo-work that adorned her flesh marked her by tribe, but the gem-encrusted ornaments that were fused to flesh and bone identified her blood-line as that of the Letoa clan matriarchs. At the age of twenty-seven, Ali'tasi was a relatively young clan-leader of the Letoa clan but she was fast making a name for herself. Born to battle in the smoldering sands of the Badlands, Ali'tasi lived for nothing else. With Siren's blood in her veins and a fire for vengeance in her heart, this woman's zealous ruthlessness was only further fueled by youthful zeal and idealism.
Her fiery nature proved infectious to those she held sway over and her numbers grew day by day. A slow but steady trickle of new clan members continued to arrive from neighboring clans, especially those young and easily swayed by her zealous words. Further serving to swell her clan-size Ali'tasi had taken to absorbing survivors of neighboring clans into her own - men and women who had lost everything to the settlers of Hera Prime.
It was from the hearts of victims, impressionable youths, and survivors that Ali'tasi drew her clan's strength from. A strength fueled by dark and ruthless desires and a ferocity matched by few.
This settlement, and the ones before it, they were only the beginning.
Khalisa's boot shoved forcefully against the chest of the dead man who lay before her in the dust of Fairwell's Rest's main street. She pried her throwing spear from his body with the grim sound of metal forcing its way through flesh, letting him fall back to the ground as it was freed. She brought the weapon up to her face, examining the tip for damage before she slotted it away into the holster on her back.
Corpses dotted the area, almost all of them belonging to the settlers. There were some few Sirens who had fallen to their advanced weaponry, but none of the settlers had been soldiers. They had been undisciplined, untrained. They had broken before the ferocity and fearlessness of the clan just as every other attempt at resistance a town had ever attempted to muster against them.
The Waysinger muttered a brief rite under her breath, to honour the fallen man. Those that had fought and died facing them, had not broken and fled to be shot in the back, they at least deserved that courtesy in death. She was about to move on from the man, for with her weapons now retrieved, she would proceed to locate and bless those of her clan that had fallen here today - on the site of their death, on the battlefield with blood still fresh in the air, as was proper. Something caught her eye, however, and she paused.
The man's rifle lay off a few feet away from his body. Khalisa's hand went subconsciously to the small burn on her left arm from where one of the superheated bolts had passed dangerously close to her as she had sprinted to within range of her throwing weapons. In the hands of someone who could steady their aim and, indeed, actually aim to begin with, such a weapon would no doubt prove very effective.
And so she crouched, taking up the rifle and feeling its weight in her hands. It was solid, felt well made - not that she was an expert on such things - but it seemed to her a good weapon. Strong, sturdy, lethal. It was no replacement for her spears, she thought, but it would make a worthy addition to her weaponry. Finding its strap and hooking it over her shoulder, Khalisa turned and stepped away towards where the nearest fallen Siren lay.
