Lurilan the [Hunter] savored the first breath of fresh air after stepping out of the Gilly [Hunter's] Lodge. It had become a ritual ever since the day he'd left home for good. He'd noticed at the time that free air tasted a great deal better than regular air, so he'd made it a habit every time he left a city or town to take a moment to savor it.
Not that he was totally out of civilization. He missed the old days when it was just the twelve of them starting out and Gilly had just been a dusty old keep from a forgotten era, so vast that he could go entire days without seeing any of the other [Hunters] who lived there. Now more than three-hundred people lived in the keep itself, and there were several outbuildings. They were even talking about putting up walls. He had mixed feelings about that. As soon as you put up walls, it was a town. There was no going back from that.
Behind him came the gruff voice of young Rhun Charlik, his partner for the day. "And so are we to stand here? If we don't start moving we'll be at this all day. Move!"
“Make no mistake, my young friend. We will be at this all day.”
Lurilan basked in the sunlight and fresh air for a moment longer, and stretched his arms before stepping forward to let Rhun through the doorway. The thing to remember about [Warriors] was that you must never do as they say right away, even when they were in the right, or else you'd never have the end of them ordering you about.
He stepped forward and started on the path towards their quarry.
“I understand the eagerness. Being cooped up indoors for too long always gives me an itch. It’s nice to be outdoors again,” said Lurilan.
Rhun stared at him incredulously. “Too long? One night in a bed and we’re already out into the dirty, stinking forest again. What is our quarry this time?”
Forests were stinky? Lurilan just couldn’t understand city people. How could they say that cities smelled better than forests? It didn’t make any sense. Any time he was in a place where humans lived permanently, the miasmatic stench of body odor, waste, and refuse threatened to choke the life out of him, removing his appetite and making it hard to concentrate on anything else. He knew that [Hunter] gave him stronger senses than most people, but regular people had to be able to smell that, too. Were they just used to it?
He wouldn't argue about the dirt thing, but only because he knew that was a lost cause. It was common knowledge that [Hunters] were dirty, even if that common knowledge was completely wrong. He hated being dirty. He couldn’t abide even the slightest speck of dirt upon his clothing; a result of his upbringing that had never gone away, and he’d always found it easier to stay clean outdoors. In a city, or even in Gilly now, someone was always moving, or throwing something, or knocking something over or generally acting in a chaotic or unpredictable way. Out in the wild, Lurilan could always tell what was about to happen.
“Well? Where are we going?”
Lurilan looked back at his [Warrior] escort. That was another annoying thing about non-[Hunters]: they were all so impatient. A [Hunter] might ask a question and then happily wait an hour or two for his partner to think before answering it. But with these people it was just talk, talk, talk all the time.
Lurilan decided to humor him. He picked a folded piece of bark paper out of his pocket and handed it to the lad.
“What’s this? A pawprint?”
“A footprint. Bipedal creatures have footprints. A [Scout] saw it last night and copied it down, and the guildmaster identified it. It belongs to a Mooneye.”
“So we’re going to where they found this footprint? So that you can follow its trail?”
“Something like that,” said Lurilan.
In actuality, he already knew exactly where the beast was. [Inerrant Tracking] gave him a perfect line to its location. His reward for rescuing Brin had been an advancement to a Skill, and while the others had probably expected him to upgrade [Power Shot] or some other offensive Skill, Lurilan had known better. He’d upgraded [Tracking], and it was the best decision he’d ever made. He’d even received a Title, [Inescapable]. Now he could find anything as long as he had a place to start, and a roughly scrawled footprint on a piece of bark paper was more than good enough.
With the frenzy of monster activity in the last year, he’d been assigned to take care of the sneakiest and most cunning monsters, the ones that no one else could catch. If there was a trick to evading his [Inerrant Tracking], he hadn’t found it yet. He’d defeated them all, and his levels had shot up. He was on track to catch up to the guildmaster soon, maybe only a month or two away.
As long as the thing with Brin didn’t take too long. Lumina had sent him a letter requesting that he meet Brin in Blackcliff, something about hunting some kind of exotic monster, but she’d been vague on the details.
“Well, I’ll be glad when this is over. No more boring hikes through empty forests.”
Lurilan peered around at the stunningly gorgeous forest landscape. This was boring? But rather than let that thought guide him into an hour of introspection, he decided to humor the boy. “This is boring? I see six varieties of trees near us, to say nothing of the grasses and fungus. See how the dogwood fights a slow and ancient war against the maple. They’ve been contending for this spot in a battle that has lasted for centuries. And what is that aspen doing here? You never see just one aspen. I wonder what its story is, and why it hasn’t spread. Also have you noticed that faintly pressurized quality of air coming in with the breeze? It seems there must be an area of lower elevation nearby, but–”
“It’s boring,” asserted Rhun. “But soon I’ll be done with this. My family has provided me with a contract and real work, guarding a rich son of Prinnash in Blackcliff.”
Lurilan bit back his annoyance at being interrupted. Why did Rhun bait him into a conversation if he didn’t want to hear what he had to say? He said neutrally, “Is that so? I’m heading that way myself soon. Perhaps I’ll see you there.”
“Since he is of Prinnash, he will know the way of things. Such as how to treat his betters,” said Rhun.
“Oh.” So that was what he was getting at. Prinnash had a very martial culture, and everyone who got the [Warrior] Class was automatically made nobility, whether their family owned land or not. Lurilan smiled. “I see. I wasn’t aware you were one to stand on formality. You may call me ‘My Lord Lurilan’ if you wish. No, in fact, I insist on it. And I will call you Sir Rhun. It is Sir Rhun, isn’t it? You aren’t real– excuse me, you aren’t high nobility, are you?”
Rhun huffed. “Forget it.”
“Forget it, my lord,” Lurilan corrected. The family he hadn’t seen in over a decade would probably laugh him to scorn if they saw him leaning on his title now, but he did technically have the right.
“And when we find this beast, this Mooneye, what will we do? Will you face it, a [Hunter]? Will you kill it with your bow?”
“Yes, and yes,” Lurilan said with a shrug. “Actually killing the beast has never been the difficult part for me. The benefits of shooting it full of arrows from a distance.
“The weapon of a coward!” Rhun spat. “Real men fight with steel.”
Lurilan examined his bow. “This is steel. It’s been hard to keep a bow with the right draw weight since I’ve been shooting up in Strength so much recently. Enchanted wood would be better, but I’m saving that for my next plateau.”
“That’s not the point. If we face real danger, then you’ll rely on a real man to protect you. You should show some respect,” said Rhun.
Lurilan would be tempted to think that all teenagers were like this, he’d probably been worse at this age, except that he knew Brin was a calm, sweet, and rational child.
No, he knew what Rhun was doing. [Warriors] gained levels by picking fights with everyone, and Rhun probably didn’t have a high enough [Inspect] to know just how much Lurilan outshadowed him. It was an annoying behavior, but it was a behavior that the System rewarded, and Lurilan would just as soon grow offended by songbirds chirping a warning song at him or by a chipmunk chewing him out for walking too close to its tree.
Still, he didn’t have to sit here and listen to it. “You were correct before. We shouldn’t waste time. Keep up, if you can. If not, I’ll pick you up on the way back so you don’t get lost.”
Lurilan began a light jog into the forest, the pace he’d set so that he’d be able to go all day and not be tired or sweaty at any point.
It was a light jog for him, but for Rhun it must’ve been a grueling pace. He was panting heavily after the first fifteen minutes. Lurilan thought that was awfully quick to get tired. He knew the boy was only level 16, but even so his Vitality should’ve been higher than that, unless he really wasn’t training at all.
They ran over hills, through thickets, and crossed streams. Here and there the path met up with a game trail, only to depart it again a mile or two later. He had to say, the trip was much more enjoyable when he only had to listen to Rhun’s heavy breathing rather than his awkward attempts to get a rise out of him.
Thirty minutes into their run, Lurilan spotted a level thirty leopard, though he didn’t give it any indication that he knew it was there. The skin of a beast that high level would fetch a nice price, and he knew Rhun could use the levels from fighting it. If the young man had been less of a pill, Lurilan would’ve agitated the leopard into attacking. Since it was Rhun, he didn’t feel the need. Annoying people might never know the opportunities they lost.
They ran on. To his credit, Rhun stayed with him for the first hour, and then for the second. After the full two and a half hour run, Lurilan finally slowed to a stop. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped off his palms, which had a faint amount of perspiration. Not really an issue, but he liked his palms to be dry when he used his bow. He stepped over to a fallen trunk and sat down.
Rhun stumbled the last few steps and then collapsed in the dirt. Lurilan scooted a few feet further on the trunk to avoid the cloud of dust that Rhun’s motion created.
The boy was heaving in air on his back, sweat staining his shirt where it was visible through the leather breastplate and arm guards. Now that sweat was going to seep into the dirt and create mud. Couldn’t he have collapsed a bit further, into the grass?
In the [Illusionist] movies, whenever they depicted [Hunters] they always smeared dirt all over their faces. Lurilan thought that was unfair. That’s how everyone else looked when they left their cities and towns. [Hunters] had more sense.
“We’ll rest here until noon,” said Lurilan.
Rhun raised a hand in acknowledgement, too winded to speak.
Lurilan watched the clouds go by in the sky, listening to the music of leaves rustling in the breeze. He also kept a firm hold on his [Inerrant Tracking] Skill. Their prey was about four thousand yards away through the forest, and a little bit down. It had probably found a recess or alcove in the earth, where it was sleeping away the light of the day. Mooneyes weren’t undead, but they were strongest at night when the moon was full, which is why Lurilan would be hunting this one at exactly noon. That was still more than an hour away since they’d rushed over here.
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Lurilan had an arrow prepared for this, a beautiful enchanted piece that would transform into pure sunlight. He was confident that he’d be able to kill it in one blow, even going through a few feet of earth if it was hiding in an alcove like he thought. He would kill it, and then they would return. A waste of a day for Rhun? Perhaps, but that was no one’s fault but his own.
Suddenly, [Inerrant Tracking] shifted, and he felt his quarry move. It was going down. Deeper underground.
“Damn it! It’s found a cave! We’re going now!”
Lurilan dashed forwards, not waiting to see if Rhun would follow, but sure enough he heard the [Warrior’s] footsteps behind him in short order. He ran ahead, moving through the trees on instincts borne of years of practice, whipping through bushes and branches, though still not dirtying his clothes.
He quickly found the cave, and felt that his prey was still going down. It smelled of death and damp and moved in much too straight a line. It was a steep incline, and went back and forth almost like a tower staircase for as far as he could sense.
“Mooneyes attack with paralysis in the dark and finish you off with claws. Don’t let it see you first. We’re going down,” said Lurilan.
Rhun was out of breath again, but nodded firmly and drew his sword.
Lurilan started down the cave. He hated caves.
Earlier in his career the [Hunters] who had trained him would just turn around and leave if their quarry ran into a cave. It wasn’t worth it to follow a monster into its den where it could eliminate the advantage of range. There were always more monsters, but you only had one life after all. Better to leave, or wait outside.
Lurilan didn’t have that option today. He pulled the arrow of sunlight out of his quiver and set it to his bow. Even if they were ambushed, he’d still get one shot off before he was forced to draw his dagger.
He sniffed the air still in the entranceway. Damp, and it stank, but he didn’t get the sense that the air was poisoned. It would have to do.
There was nothing much in the first stretch of passageways, nothing but damp dirt walls. Lurilan watched the walls carefully as he could, making sure he’d spot any traps or ambush holes, but also to make sure he wouldn’t brush the muddy walls with his sleeves in his rush.
He had to move faster than the prey, but not so fast as to be incautious. There was also Rhun to think of. Leaving him behind in the forest was one thing, but they shouldn’t split up in a cave when the monster was close.
“Wait!” he heard Rhun say, and he did. Rhun shuffled with his pack, and then drew out a torch. He lit it with an enchanted lighter, and the cavern filled with light.
Lurilan felt his lips curl in disgust. Torches were good for making a very bright light for about twenty minutes, but then when it went out they’d be even worse off, not to mention the possibility of warning your prey off with the smell. Was the kid’s darkvision really not sufficient for the tunnel this near to the surface? Actually, Rhun might not have any kind of darkvision at all.
He chose to ignore the torch and keep moving.
They moved down, until the dirt and mud turned to sandstone–still wet, though. Lurilan felt his prey move through the tunnels. They stopped being so perfectly uniform, and turned to something a bit more natural feeling. Something had dug its way down here, he was sure of it, but the tunnels here were probably following an old underground stream.
The tunnel was round and loopy like a river, and there were places where he could see it made circles the way that rivers made oxbow lakes. It curved wide and around, and he felt his prey circle back towards him as it followed the natural winding path until…
“Turn around! Go!” Lurilan shouted.
To his credit, Rhun didn’t hesitate. He turned and rushed the other direction, with Lurilan following him.
“Yes! Here! We’re in luck,” said Lurilan.
“What is it?” asked Rhun.
“The cave winds back this way on the other side. The stone here is less than a foot thick, and the Mooneye is headed this way.”
Rhun’s eyes lit up. “I have a pickaxe–”
“No need. Shield your eyes, if you please.”
The second he put the arrow of sunlight to string it began to glow. Rhun shielded his eyes with both hands, dropping the torch, but Lurilan didn’t have that luxury and the bright glow seared his eyes.
Still he waited for the right moment. Just as he felt the Mooneye grow nearest, he pulled as far as he dared without breaking the bow, and loosed.
The arrow roared in fury as it erupted from the string, and blasted its way into the wall, closer to the floor.
Lurilan turned and shielded Rhun with his body, though there was little shrapnel; the arrow was a precise strike, not a clumsy explosion. He felt the heat as it blasted through the wall to hit whatever was on the other side.
You have defeated: Mooneye [30] Due to level disparity, experience has been reduced.
Ears ringing, Lurilan turned to see a hole surrounded by glowing stone, heated and melted by his arrow.
Through the hole, he saw the remains of the mooneye. It had been blasted into two parts, but he could still see the face with one big eye, and the arms with long black claws.
“Is it dead?” Rhun asked, blinking and stepping forward.
“It is.”
“Then that’s it? We go back?”
“Not quite, I’m afraid,” said Lurilan. “There’s something off about this cave. We’ll need to investigate. Keep your sword ready.”
The hole his arrow made through the stone wasn’t big enough to walk through, so they followed the original path of the cave, wrapping around until they got to the Mooneye from the other side. Lurilan stepped over it, and Rhun gave it a kick as they went by.
Further on, the cave changed from the twisting river back to something looking artificial again, going down in a straight line away from the sandstone and down into solid bedrock.
“There’s something you should know about these tunnels,” Lurilan said. “This is what we’re truly doing here in Gilly. Did you ever think it strange that we were spending so much effort to eradicate monsters in the middle of nowhere? When monsters have been running wild across the entire kingdom, why are we wasting even a single [Hunter] here? Even the Boglands are more populated than this forest.”
“Weakness,” Rhun spat. “In Prinnash, we hunted all monsters to extinction long ago.”
“Cut it out. I’ve been to Prinnish, you know, and I hunted some truly terrific beasts there. No, it’s for these tunnels. We think they’re Arcaena’s doing. I can smell undead, but I haven’t seen tracks yet. We’ll need to confirm it.”
That shut Rhun up, and if anything, Lurilan was underselling the matter. Lumina herself had asked Lurilan to come here. She knew about his [Inerrant Tracking]. She knew that he could find anything, the most dangerous beasts, escaped criminals, pirates and brigands. She’d asked him to spend the past year here.
The tunnel opened up into a cave. The ceiling was still fairly low, but it was wide and long and split off into several different directions. He squinted against the torch, trying to see if the shadows it cast were more tunnels or just shadows, but it was useless. The light was killing his darkvision. He was surprised it was still burning though, it had been forty minutes with no sign of stopping.
Lurilan stepped forward into the middle of the cave. “Get ready. This is where we’ll be ambushed.”
“Ambushed?” Rhun asked, his eyes wild and eager. “By what?”
Lurilan didn’t have to answer. The sound of running feet answered for him. Some footsteps with shoes, others bare, a few armored. They approached, nearer, until all at once they burst into view from the tunnel ahead.
Undead, their eyes flat and uncaring, with gray ragged flesh and black clothing, holding weapons of rough blacksteel. They charged silently, weapons flashing.
Rhun’s torch chose that moment to go out.
Lurilan cursed. The entire cave was thrown into darkness, and it would take a minute for his darkvision to adjust.
He loosed his arrow, and heard it crash through several of the undead. He drew another arrow and pulled, but in his panic he pulled too hard and his bow snapped. His hands stung, and the string sliced his cheek.
He dropped the bow and pulled his dagger, stepping forward. He was no [Rogue] but his hearing and smell were good enough to get a rough location of the undead.
He charged into them, checking the nearest with his shoulder and driving it to the floor. Then on the ground, he rolled away and heard a satisfying crunch as a mace missed him and smashed the undead on the ground. Since he knew where the mace was now, he darted towards its wielder and slashed through the monster's chest, cutting through lungs and heart.
You have defeated: Undead Soldier [19] Due to level disparity, experience has been reduced.
Then he jumped back on instinct and felt the whoosh of air as several weapons passed through where he’d just been.
He was starting to get his darkvision back. Good, now that he could see them–
A bright light blinded him again. Rhun had found another torch.
The half second it took to blink away the light nearly ended him, and he brought up his dagger to parry a slashing greataxe, only surviving because of the huge difference in levels. He rolled with the blow and turned to stab the undead multiple times in the forehead, then the heart.
A younger Lurilan would’ve chosen that moment to jump back and avoid the grimy blood squirting from the undead, but Galan had drilled that little idiosyncrasy out of him. “Tidiness is a virtue, but not on a battlefield,” the [Knight] would say.
Lurilan stepped forward, pressing the attack. While the light casting dark shadows wasn’t as good as his darkvision, it gave him enough to work with, and he darted into the crowd of undead. He took a sword out of the hands of one, and went to work with it, cutting down the filthy monsters left and right, uncaring of the spray of black and muddy blood.
He received a slew of notifications, but dismissed them all. The undead soldiers weren’t high level enough to be of note.
When the last was down, he turned to see Rhun still locked in combat. A dextrous undead with a rapier hopped forward and back, testing Rhun with neat and precise strikes. Rhun responded with perfect form, the hallmark of a [Warrior], striking at the undead with a longsword while holding the torch in his offhand. His motions were smooth and elegant. Every strike was perfectly calibrated to be exactly where it should be. But perfection was also predictable, and their duel raged back and forth, neither gaining ground.
The undead cut towards Rhun’s feet, and the [Warrior] stepped back to avoid it, and now the undead was vulnerable from above. Lurilan saw the feint for what it was, but Rhun was too inexperienced, too used to relying on his Class. He swung high and smacked the top of the cave with his sword.
The undead grinned and stabbed forward. A panicked Rhun swung wildly with his torch, managing to both parry the stab and catch the undead’s sleeve on fire. It screeched and jumped back, but that was more than enough of an opening for Rhun, who cut its leg off at the knee and then finished it off on the ground.
“Yes! I am triumphant! Two levels!” Rhun cheered, ringing his sword against the roof again as he threw his hands up in the air. “And we’ve confirmed it. The undead are moving through here. What will they do when we return with word of this?”
“They’ll send a team of sappers here to collapse the tunnel and make sure nothing can use this to get to the surface,” said Lurilan.
Rhun scoffed. “In Prinnash, we would come with armies and destroy the undead to the last.”
Lurilan shook his head. “Prinnash would be too worried about Olland and Frenaria if they suddenly moved an army away from the border and underground. They would collapse the tunnel with sappers.”
“No. Not in Prinnash,” said Rhun. Then he shifted his expression to look a little less cocky. “But perhaps… we could have this conversation up above?”
“Let’s go a little deeper,” said Lurilan.
“Why?”
“Just a hunch.”
Deeper they went. The tunnel quickly met up with a main thoroughfare. The stone floor probably looked like nothing to a [Warrior], but to a [Hunter] it opened up a whole world. He saw traces of great giant undead, down on hands and knees to fit under the low ceilings. He saw the clacking feet of armor, the partial feet of undead rotting with each step, the cloth shoes of regular undead soldiers. He saw undead beasts, followed by undead humans holding the chains.
And… something else. Something he couldn’t quite put a finger on.
There was a sound in the distance, a rumbling sound of running feet. A lot of them were coming this way. That was their loss. This thoroughfare went in a straight line for nearly five hundred feet. With his bow, he could…
He’d snapped his bow. He couldn’t fight that many. He needed to be out of here before they came.
“Bring the torch over!” Lurilan ordered.
Rhun rushed to comply, moving away from the side tunnel to raise it above the tracks Lurilan was looking at. “Is this how they–”
“Hush.” He scanned the ground, looking for clues. What had he missed? He’d seen passages like this before, but never with that same feeling like there was a clue here that he’d noticed but not understood. He ran his eyes up and down the tunnel floor, willing himself to see, to understand.
Big undead and little undead. Armored undead and rotting undead. Smelly, stinky, worthless, body odor undead. Big undead and little undead. He was thinking in circles.
Little undead. There was a small, muddy footprint there, so obvious that even Rhun could probably see it. The mud was… oh.
He got it. The mud. Lurilan didn’t like mud, but he understood it. When your senses were far beyond the natural, you started to see the tiny differences in things. Like how mud dried differently when it was cool, rather than if it had been slightly warmed by a living body.
That small shoe print had been made by something alive. It had been made by a child.
All at once the rest of the weirdness snapped into place. Undead had come this way, but also people. Lots of people.
Arcaena was using these tunnels to move a large population of humans. But why? The good part was that he wasn’t the one in charge of figuring that out. All he needed to do was get this information to Lumina.
“I’ve seen what I need to. Get ready. We’re fighting our way to the surface.”
He tilted his head to the side on instinct, and felt the air as an arrow flew past his cheek.
“Scratch that. I have one last thing I want to do.”
Lurilan smiled. An arrow meant a bow. He wanted that bow. Then they would fight their way to the surface.