Chapter 445 - The Hunter and the Hunted

Claire shut the curtains with a vector as she climbed into bed. Sylvia followed right behind her, silently pleading with her eyes until the lyrkress begrudgingly assumed her smallest humanoid form. Only then did the half-elf tackle her into the sheets with a giggle. The fox wrapped her arms around her pet’s shoulders, buried her face into her hair, and got as comfortable as she reasonably could with their legs all tangled together.

Despite being treated more like a stuffed toy than a person, Claire was first to fall asleep. Her mind vacated her body in a heartbeat and went on another one of its usual adventures. River-related incidents aside, it was only her third time returning to the void since they had set out for the Langgbjerns. She had spent most nights making some sort of progress, be it practicing her magic, preparing for the slaughter ahead, or simply climbing her way further into the mountains.

Both other nights she slept, she was greeted immediately with the usual open doorways. She had expected to see the same result, but when she opened her eyes, she found herself in the midst of a dream.

It was the usual setting. She was far above the clouds, sitting with a book in front of her while Allegra chatted away. Her first thought was to disregard the fictitious rabbit and wander about. The last thing she wanted to do was waste her night on a fake rabbit, but she stopped the moment as she spotted herself in the mirror. She was roughly Allegra’s height.

She must’ve been around seven or eight. Finally, she had found her way into a dream that took place before her mother’s death.

Shooting to her feet, she dashed into the hallway while her tutor shouted after her. She probably would have run straight into a wall with how quick she was going had she not grabbed herself with her vectors and corrected her posture. Her wings and tail burst from her back, stabilizing her as she catapulted past the maids and through the manor.

But upon arriving at her mother’s room, she only found that it was empty, barren, devoid of its master. She tried checking some of her other usual haunts, but the courtyard, the garden, and her father’s study were all just as empty.

Her mother was missing—removed from the world outright.

She slammed her fist into the wall, breaking straight through the supportive rock as she bit her lips. She almost wanted to cry.

All she wanted was to see her mother’s face.

But the world refused to comply.

“Hey, it’s not the wall’s fault you suck at using your powers.”

The voice came from the likely perp—the reason she had even dreamt about her mother again in the first place. She knew it was Panda. But when she raised her eyes, she found a white moose, a towering man the same size as her father with his arms crossed and his back leaning against the wall. They were strikingly similar, so much so that she likely would have mistaken them had she not spotted his entirely disheveled hair and his offensively unsightly goatee.

There was something about him that differentiated him from the panicked servants. It wasn’t just his nonstandard reaction or his unusual form, but the very nature of his being.

It felt like he was there. Really, genuinely there.

“Check the calendar. She’s probably off at a party with your old man.”

He was probably right. Her mother often stepped out during the summer to do her duties as the house’s lady. And she had been unfortunate enough to see a dream devoid of winter’s embrace.

But while she certainly had those thoughts, they only lingered in her mind for so long before they were shipped away.

“You were the one who killed her.” Claire lunged without warning. Even in her dreams, Boris answered her call and entered her hands.

“God, I wish,” he said, with a laugh, as he caught her by the wrists. “Can you imagine how your father would have reacted if I skewered her in front of him?”

Claire paused. She froze for a brief moment before slowly lowering her lizard and meeting his cackling eyes.

“Did Father fall for that act?”

Constantius clutched his sides, nearly falling to the ground as he broke into another fit. “Claire Augustus, do you really think that this is an act? Are you really that stupid?”

“I'm better at reading people than he is.”

The moose clicked his tongue, the delight vanishing from his face in a heartbeat. “You’re a real killjoy, you know that?”

“You’re an awful actor,” she said. “And you seemed to have plenty of fun teasing me about my mother.”

“Wow, between the legs right out of the gate?” Panda massaged the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “You know you don’t have to be like that, right? It was all in the faith of some good old fun. And I wasn’t lying.”

“I don’t care.” Claire rolled her eyes. “Get out of my dream. Don’t talk to me.”

“You make it sound like I want to be here,” grumbled the moose-man. “Only reason I am is ‘cause I’m getting paid to bring you a message.” He raised a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. “Do not return by way of rift lest you wish to enable your enemies.”

The lyrkress narrowed her eyes. “From the goddess of the frozen wilds?”

“Who knows?” Constantius shrugged. “My client never instructed me to divulge their identity. And unfortunately for you, their trust is a whole lot more valuable than yours.”

“That sounds like a lie.”

“Well it isn’t.” Panda spun around and started walking down the hall. “Anyway, that’s all you’re getting out of me.”

The man vanished as soon as he voiced the words, simply fizzling out as if he’d never been.

Claire paused for a few seconds to consider his words before looking to the nearest door and making an exit of her own. The manor was instantly replaced with the phantom’s usual world. It had been a while since she visited—she didn’t feel like she had much of a reason to return after completing his lessons in divinity—but she hadn’t expected it to change as much as it had.

Cracks ran through the realm. They almost looked like circuits, with bits of red and gold coursing through the glimmering rifts. The man was no different. Both his physical and astral forms were covered in the breaking lines. They ran through him, corrupting everything from head to toe. While his body was up to its usual shenanigans, she wasn’t at all surprised to find his spirit collapsed against a wall, chest heaving up and down, as if gasping for air.

He looked up when she approached, but his eyes were distant, completely out of focus. He wasn’t looking at her. He had only reacted because he sensed some sort of presence.

“Who goes there?” he asked, weakly.

Claire frowned. Perhaps, she wasn’t the only one that her uncle visited. Either that, or she wasn’t the sole guest to frequent his domain.

Whatever the case, she elected not to voice her name. Speaking felt wrong as usual, but at the same time, he didn’t seem to react when she lifted his hand with a vector and traced the letters that made up her name. In fact, he didn’t even seem to register that his hand had been lifted at all. The withered phantom simply remained where he was, a line of drool slowly running down the side of his face.

“It’s Claire.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Eventually, she gave in and violated the silence. Her voice created another crack, a massive, jagged rift that ran from wall to wall. The whole building almost seemed to start leaning to one side with its advent, but so too did the ghost regain a little bit of his vigour. Coughing, he pushed himself up and rubbed his face with his wrist.

“Claire…” When he next opened his eyes, they were unclouded, purged of all their weariness. “Right. Claire.” He grit his teeth and took a breath. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“You have?”

There was another crack, another splintering of the world around them.

“This world is falling apart,” he said.

“I can see that,” she said, with a roll of the eyes.

The third breakage was mirrored in his form. A large crack danced up his heel, stopping only as it stretched halfway through his calves. He balled his hands into fists and dug his teeth into his lips, but not even that was enough to stop the pained groan that escaped the depths of his throat.

“Oh, how long I’ve waited,” he said, between laboured breaths, “for your divinity to flow as readily as a river out to sea.”

Claire tilted her head.

“That was the condition for this containment zone’s, this prison’s erosion,” he said. “There are a few things you need to know. About this. All of this.” He stopped for a moment to wheeze. “A long time ago, Flu—”

“I don’t care,” said Claire.

“I figured you wouldn’t.” The man chuckled as he pushed himself up into a better supported position. “It doesn’t really matter. Everything will be explained soon. Even if I don’t have to say it.”

“I said, I don’t care,” said Claire. The ground shook with every word that she voiced. Cracks ran up the walls and across the ceiling as bits of dust and debris rained over their heads. “I don’t care what you want, and I don’t care what Flux wants. I’ll set my own goals and decide my own future.”

“I’m sorry, Claire.” The phantom nearly coughed out a lung as he broke into a hearty laugh. “But that’s exactly why we made you.”

She frowned, frowned and kept silent.

“You should go if you don’t want to hear the rest. I can’t hold him back much longer.”

“Doesn’t matter. He has his sights set on me already.”

“Still.”

“If he tries anything, I’ll kill him.”

“He is still a god, you know?” The man spoke as if to lecture her, but the grin on his face stood in stark defiance. “And not one of the imprisoned fools that fell to Vella’s blade.”

“I don’t care.”

The phantom flashed his bloodstained teeth. “I knew I raised you well.”

He waited for her to nod before following through. With a snap of the fingers, all of the divinity that poured through the world’s cracks was gone. The one place where all the cracks met began to splinter apart, bending and groaning beneath the weight of the claw that soon broke through the realm to reveal a massive lion standing in front of a bright blue sky.

Almost like a liquid, he seeped through the cracks, assuming a humanoid shape only after pooling his essence atop the phantom’s carpet. The olive-skinned beast stood roughly ten paces away, just inside of the door frame that his massive, muscular form couldn’t have possibly fit through.

“Greymane,” snarled the cat-man.

“Kael’ahruus,” said the phantom. “I haven’t seen your ugly excuse for a face in a long, long time.” He pushed himself up again and twisted his lips into a grin. “How’s all that lost divinity been treating you?”

The lion said nothing, but he couldn’t have made his rage more obvious. His fists were trembling, his teeth were buried in his gums, and his tail was standing on end. He very well might have blown a fuse had the phantom not degenerated into a coughing fit.

But instead, he was given just enough time to look between the caldriess and the ghost.

“Interesting,” he said. “This… violates all of my expectations.”

“It probably wouldn’t if you had more functional brain cells,” said Greymane. “Or did we take those too, when we stole eternity from your grasp?”

Again, the god was enraged. He was so mad that he lowered his stance and pounced.

Blood filled the room as claw met flesh.

But the god of the hunt was on neither end of the interaction.

Kael’ahruus skid to a halt in the middle of the room as he watched a talon emerge from the phantom’s back. Though he had no body, though he had no form, the erupting hand was covered with a light blue plasma, the very ectoplasm that ran through the phantom’s veins.

Claire had struck him.

Claire had slain him.

Greymane laughed, cackled as his essence flowed through her circuits. His body started to fade. It shook to and fro, disintegrating right as he turned his lips to the god of the hunt and flashed a sated grin.

The realm started to fade away as his body vanished. The cracks remained, but the world itself became an open savanna, a wide-open plain with golden grasses extending as far as the eye could see. There were a few bits of green, shrubs and peculiar trees whose leaves only lived near the top of their canopies. There were distant mountains, off upon the horizon. And then, there was prey.

Every species ended by the god of the hunt was present, roaming its own section of the plains. Some were simple creatures, like the polka dotted elephants who flapped their ears overhead, and the towering lizards that sprinted on two legs. But others were more civilized. There were ancient cities built with techniques and materials that Claire had never once seen, ancient people speaking languages that she had never once heard, and ancient warriors sharpening their weapons for the beast’s eventual return.

“You dare?” growled Kael’ahruus. His eyes glowed gold, shimmering brightly beneath the morning light. “That prey was mi—”

There was a sudden change in the surrounding vectors, but it was already too late by the time he noticed. A hole opened up in front of his throat, and a dagger, a frozen blade made entirely of true ice, came surging straight through.

It snuck past his mane, ripped into his flesh, and severed his vocal chords, cutting him off mid-sentence. The god staggered backwards and clutched his throat. The wound was already healed by the time that the blade left him, but he kept his hand pressed over it as his face twisted in a mix of shock and rage.

The mortal had struck him without a moment’s hesitation.

And her dagger had left its mark.

It was the same reason that Claire had to fight back the urge to smile.

Her last attempt at harming him had gone nowhere. Even when finding its mark, her blade had simply slipped right off of his fur. Not too much had changed since. Sure, she had gained a few levels, but that was the extent of it. It wasn’t like she had ascended again or broken through any major landmarks. She wasn’t even fully healed.

And yet, his fur was stained, dyed in vivid crimson.

A roar welled from within his chest, but again, he found his voice silenced. The very same knife that had claimed his throat ruptured his ribs and stole his breath.

He furrowed his brow as he watched her draw the weapon from between his ribs. It made no sense. They were in his realm, the absolute domain where he was almighty, where his power could never be disputed. She shouldn’t have been able to harm him.

“Are you stupid?”

He never voiced the thought out loud, but she responded as if he had.

“This is my realm.”

Another wave of cracks appeared in the world as she made the declaration. And then a second. And then a third.

The savanna shook and crumbled as the lion began to shiver. And then, with a clench of her fist, it shattered, breaking into a thousand absurdly tiny pieces that rained like shards of a broken glass ceiling. It was ridiculous, absurd. But the plain became a mountain. The golden field became a blanket of snow, and the acacian wattle became a forest of pines.

“Be patient.” She smiled at him. It was a soft, almost gentle smile, like the sort that a child might have expected from a mother. “Your turn will come after I end your champion.”

She pulled her divine vessel from within her chest and departed the realm with a twist.

Kael’ahruus was left to hiss and snarl by his lonesome. She wasn’t just irreverent. It was like she didn’t even acknowledge him as a superior being. But while that certainly irked him to no end, it only came second to his restrictions.

She had too many backers; even Flitzegarde had taken a liking to her. It didn’t help that she was sworn to one of his enemies. The other gods would certainly convict him if he smote her without proper justification. And while he would have readily accepted the punishment and called it a fair trade, he knew that it wasn’t. Flux would happily use the opening to finish him regardless of the punishment to follow.

It was a shame that she wasn’t a celestial. At least then, he might have been able to plausibly plead self-defense. Alas, as she was, it would be no different from accusing a mouse of threatening his life, even if said mouse had somehow shoved a knife through his ankle.

Fortunately, he had the perfect opportunity to play by the rules. There was nothing stopping him from empowering his champion. He could bestow as many blessings and boons as he pleased if it meant preparing the hunter for a divine trial, and a duel with the demon that was his archnemesis was precisely the epitome of such a challenge.

He would drown the man in fangs. If the bow was insufficient, he needed only to add a hunting sword and a throwing spear to his collection. And if even that still proved that it wasn’t enough, he would simply need to bestow an ultimate ability.

Something that could stand in defiance of even the gods themselves.

Something that would allow him to become the ultimate hunter.

It didn’t matter if she had Flux’s support. It didn’t matter if she had Flitzegarde’s favour.

His apprentice would make her his prey.