To his credit, Alex managed to resist the urge to jump right back in as soon as he returned to his room. He’d have to be an adult about Elderpyre, for the first few days at least, until he had figured out how his time online affected his physical, flesh-and-bone body.
He did some squats and push-ups, took a shower, star-gazed a bit, was shocked at how different the night sky looked without the city’s light pollution, and turned in for the night. He slept like a baby. Still, by the time the sun shone its first rays through his window’s blinds, he was already half-awake and itching to get back to Elderpyre, back to Aernor.
He found himself in the exact same place he’d been when he’d logged out, which was… fuck if he knew. According to his HUD and system notifications, he was somewhere in the Brennai Weald. That didn’t say much. Judging from what he’d seen from atop that crag the previous day, the woodland was vast. Looking for the crag to reorient himself was the best course of action, he decided. He couldn’t have gotten that far away from it, though the canopy above was too thick to let him be sure.
He had just managed to figure out which way was north–no Survival skill bump this time–when he saw something move out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t have to look hard to spot what it was; among the greens and browns and greys of the forest, the snow-white owl was almost glowing.
It was huge, as far as owls went. Alex had once seen a bald eagle, and he could swear this owl was at least as big as that. Its feathers were the purest white and its face was shaped like a heart. Its talons were huge, too, but it didn’t look like it intended to use them anytime soon. It just sat there and studied Hunter with eyes like black pearls.
“Uh… hello there.”
Not unexpectedly, the owl offered no reply, save for a tilt of its round head.
“No need to get alarmed. I’m just passing through, okay?”
Again, no response.
His friend Packman would have made fun of him for talking to a bird, but then again Packman wasn’t here to see said bird with his own eyes. It wasn’t even about the thing’s size. In Hunter’s book, anything that mystical-looking warranted good manners and a wide berth.
He was just about to turn around and go on his way when the owl let out a hoot, its timbre deep and rich. Certain that it had Hunter’s attention, it took to the air and flew to another branch a few dozen feet away. It made no sound whatsoever; if Hunter wasn’t looking at it, he’d never know it was even there. Then it let out another hoot, staring Hunter right in the eyes.
“Do you want me to follow you?”
Silence.
“Okay then, lead the way.”
As it turned out, that was exactly what the owl wanted. It glided from one tree branch to the next like a ghost, occasionally waiting for Hunter to catch up. Hunter, in turn, trampled through the tree trunks and the brush, anxious to keep the majestic bird in sight. He was simply too curious not to. Half an hour later, the owl led him to the edge of a clearing, then promptly proceeded to fly off in the distance.
“Hey, wait!” Hunter shouted, but it was already gone. Great. He took a look around him, trying to figure out why the bird had led him there.
The first thing he noted was that there was something off. There wasn’t an obvious natural reason for the clearing to be where it was; the pines and firs just refused to grow anywhere closer than thirty feet to the standing stone.
As he crossed the tree line, a notification confirmed his suspicions. There was a palpable change in the air, strong enough to make Hunter take a step back. This was some kind of special location.
No, special wasn’t the right word.
The right word was otherworldly.
Whatever this place was, Hunter got the distinct feeling he wasn’t supposed to be there. The sounds of the forest suddenly felt distant and muted. No birds flew above the clearing. A thin layer of mist covered the barren ground. Each crunching footstep in the bed of dry leaves and pine needles seemed to echo out between the trees for miles in all directions. Hunter had never had such a bad case of the goosebumps before in his life, and it wasn’t just from the sudden chill of the forest air.
There were no weeds on the ground, no flowers, just a thin layer of mist. The border between the clearing and the rest of the Weald was clearly marked by a circle of animal bones–or at least what Hunter hoped were animal bones. Some were ancient-looking and sun-bleached, like the ones that had made up the Shambler he’d fought the previous day. Others were suspiciously fresh-looking. Hunter tried not to look at those too much. At the center of it all stood the standing stone, eerily dampening the colors themselves around it to drab monochromes.
Hunter, of course, being Hunter, walked right up to it.
The stone itself looked like a giant shard of dark rock jammed straight into the ground by some primeval titan’s hand. There were lines upon lines of writing etched everywhere on it, letters and symbols and runes and sigils. It looked so heavily eroded, though, that Hunter doubted he’d be able to make heads or tails of any of it.
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“APPROACH.”
Hunter felt the voice resound in his bones more than heard it with his ears. Its timbre–if he could call it that, as the voice was more like a powerful notion than an actual sound–was ageless. Sepulchral. The single, massive word was permission and invitation and command all rolled into one. Hunter was transfixed. Without even giving it conscious thought, he raised his hand and touched the stone’s rough surface.
He didn’t have time to even think. The moment his fingertips came in contact with the stone, he found himself thrown into a realm of spirits, a somber, dreamlike reflection of the clearing. A wall of mist rose where the circle of bones lay. Ghostly figures moved behind it, blurred but not concealed. And where the stone had been, there now stood a gigantic armored form, shrouded in gloom and seated on a great throne of vines, roots, old bones, and briars.
“KNEEL.”
Hunter did not have to be told twice. He fell to his knees so fast he heard them creak, bowed his head in prostration, and didn’t dare raise his eyes. It was not a conscious choice. It was barely an instinctive one. When one stood before a being like that, one fell to one’s knees. It was how things always had been, how things always would be.
“FACE ME.”
He did.
An inky duskiness clung to the spirit’s huge form, mercifully dimming his umbral radiance somehow. He looked like a giant of a man clad in layers of fur, leather, and chainmail. A great bushy beard the color of cold steel cascaded from his face all the way to an ornate girdle. Behind the visor of his moose-antlered helmet burned two pinpricks of cold, calculating intelligence.
“TRANSIENT,” the voice boomed. “YOU DARE COME HERE? INTRIGUING. YOU SHALL BE GRANTED YOUR AUDIENCE.”
If Hunter was expected to say something, he did not. For the first time in his life, he truly understood the meaning of the word ‘awe’, that impossible, merciless mixture of dread and reverence.
“OH?” Hunter felt his glaive being torn from his grasp, pulled by an unseen hand and raised to the being’s eye level. “YOU HAVE BEEN ON THE HUNT, I SEE. A GOOD HUNT. VERY WELL, THEN. I OFFER YOU AN ACCORD. IT IS ONLY FITTING, SEEMING AS ONE OF YOUR KIND HAS DEPRIVED ME OF ONE OF MY MOST SKILLED HUNTERS. YOU SHALL SERVE IN HIS PLACE.”
“Wh-what?” Hunter managed to stutter.
“HUNT IN MY NAME. BRING ME THE TROPHIES FROM YOUR PREY, STEEPED IN THEIR BLOOD, AND YOU WILL BE REWARDED. FAIL TO DO SO, AND I WILL HAVE YOUR OWN. DO YOU ACCEPT? MY WORD IS MY BOND.”
Every fiber of his being was telling him to turn to flee, but he could not. Hunter caught himself wanting to say yes. When one stood before a being like that, one did not say no. It was how things always had been, how things always would be. Hunter understood that. Hunter felt that.
“DO YOU ACCEPT, TRANSIENT?”
That word, accord… He recalled the description of the mystic class: seeker of secrets, striker of accords, keeper of forbidden knowledge. Was this one of those so-called interesting opportunities Faux-Grimm had mentioned? Was he supposed to say yes?
Why not?
What did he have to lose?
“Alright,” he said, and the accord was struck. “I accept.”
The words had barely left his mouth when he felt something shift within him, like the resonant rumble of tectonic plates moving deep underground. The back of his right hand burned with eldritch power and a notification popped up before him.
“YOU OF THE HUNT, BEAR WITNESS!” the voice boomed. “THE ACCORD HOLDS! THE TRANSIENT RIDES WITH US!”
The phantasmal forms on the other side of the mist wall exploded in blood-curdling cheers. Like hypnotized, Hunter rose to his feet, grabbed the shaft of the glaive that had been suspended in the air, and lifted it to the sky. The edge of his field of vision came alive with a cascade of additional notifications, but he barely noticed them. The presence had him completely transfixed.
“PRESENT YOUR PREY’S TROPHY, THEN.”
The cheers went on louder and wilder, but Hunter froze.
Trophy?
What trophy?
He’d taken no trophy!
“YOU HAVE BEEN ON THE HUNT. WHERE IS YOUR TROPHY, HUNTSMAN?”
“I… I don’t have one,” Hunter finally found his voice. “I didn’t take any.”
Hunter felt rather than saw the wicked smile that bloomed behind the presence’s visor. He felt rather than saw its razor-sharp shark teeth, the gleeful malevolence it radiated.
“TROPHY OR NOT TROPHY, A HUNT IS A HUNT. A PREY FELLED IS A PREY FELLED. AND,” the voice said, “AN ACCORD IS AN ACCORD.”
Hunter took a step back and threw a panicked glance around him. Every hair on his body was standing at its end, every instinct he had was screaming at him to run. There was nowhere to go. The misty forms around him crowded the invisible barrier around him, cutting off all his escape routes.
“BRING ME THE TROPHIES FROM YOUR PREY, STEEPED IN THEIR BLOOD, AND YOU WILL BE REWARDED. FAIL TO DO SO, AND I WILL HAVE YOUR OWN,” the presence recited. “MY WORD IS MY BOND.”
The mist that clung to the ground rose around Hunter, thicker and more real than before. The phantasmal forms crossed the circle of bones and crept closer, a throng of ethereal apparitions, featureless men and women. They fixed their milky white eyes on him, opened their mouths as if to whisper something, reached for him with their twisted, translucent limbs and appendages.
The antlered, armored presence rose to its full height, towering over Hunter, and fixed him with a gaze that pierced him to his soul.
He tried to scream, crawl away, close his eyes, do something. He couldn’t. All he could do was stare at the semi-translucent forms that gathered around him, frozen and numb.
Spectral claws dug in his chest like hooks, tearing his flesh, stretching it like the world’s most morbid saltwater taffy.
Hunter tried to scream again, but nothing came out of his throat except a bloody gurgle. The ghost-things tore deeper in his body with fevered hunger, ripping him apart, freezing his blood and lungs and heart with their icy touch.
Above him, the great antlered presence oversaw the slaughter with eyes burning with cold satisfaction.
There was another word Hunter truly understood the meaning of for the first time in his life, now: ‘agony’. Real, visceral, soul-breaking agony.
There was no escaping these things; the only thing he could do was stand there stunned and scream in his head as they maimed and mutilated him, all under the watchful, merciless eye of their lord.